


Grave Robbers

by WildEmpires



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fate is cruel, Feudal Era, Ghosts, Graphic Description of Corpses, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Lost Love, M/M, M/M smut only, Modern Era, Mostly Inu/Sess but also grappling with Inu/Kag, Multi, Post-Canon, Regret, Sibling Incest, Slow Burn, Smut, Takes place after the bulk of the human cast has passed away, Time Travel, at the same time..., lost chances, mention of gross bugs and for that i am sorry, mentions of others - Freeform, they can't be together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:20:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 37,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23364616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildEmpires/pseuds/WildEmpires
Summary: If they ever stood a chance, it was wasted before they knew it.Sesshomaru is haunted in the past while Inuyasha resurrects a sleeping beast in the future. Time isn't their side and neither is fate, but they fight it even so.
Relationships: Higurashi Kagome/InuYasha, InuYasha/Sesshoumaru (InuYasha)
Comments: 27
Kudos: 101





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I only marked this as underage because Inuyasha is one of those immortal teenagers and no one knows how old Sesshomaru is supposed to be. There is no untoward content with anyone younger here.
> 
> This is the only chapter for which there is a death, corpse, and bug warning. Please forgive me. It's more palatable after this.

Few were the times where he could scent his approach on the air. It used to be he could catch that mottled stench by chance nearly every turn he took. That had been back when he roamed the country with his wife, curing uprisings and infestations and insurgents with a swing of his sword. The excursions had ceased for some time now, hadn’t they? Or perhaps there was simply less need for it. It was no business of his.

When the hanyou burst from the trees Sesshomaru was startled. Not by the entrance. Wild boars had more subtlety. It was the rough edge to his breath. Such a run shouldn’t wind him so badly.

“You’re a hard fucker to find.”

Sesshomaru remained rigid in place. “I expected you had no need of me.”

Inuyasha rubbed his chin. His face was ruddy. Faint tracks of dirt molded over his jaw, like he’d rooted up radishes and brushed the sweat away with soiled hands. His hair was mussed more than usual. His wife would no doubt scold him suitably, so Sesshomaru spoke nothing of it.

“Is that how it’s going to be?” He scrubbed his arm over his cheek and the sleeve carried away the soil marks. “How can you know anything about who needs you if you’re always fucking off to the other end of the earth?”

“This is hardly the end of the earth.”

He began to stalk forward. His gait was strange. The haughty throw of his shoulders had given way to a slump, his footsteps stymied by a stony weight. “I don’t get you. You’re happy like this?” He gestured around. Jaken and Ah-Un were absent, and so their only company was birdsong and underbrush. “This is my fucking nightmare.”

Sesshomaru narrowed his eyes. “Is there a purpose to this visit, Inuyasha? Or do you wish to waste my time as well as your own?”

“Waste?” A smile split his face. “A waste.” He’d moved closer. Too close. Sesshomaru smelled salt. More soil. There was dirt in the beds of his claws. “You told me to come find you.”

He had done no such thing.

“Or maybe it would be in another ten years.”

He was within arm’s reach. Striking reach. Once it would have been suicide for Inuyasha to breach the scope of his whip. He came closer still.

“Or fifty.”

He stopped only when they were toe to toe. He had not grown much. Three fingers’ width at best. The years lent more to his face, a sharper cut to his cheeks and jaw and a scant broadness to his shoulders below. Inuyasha was edging into the form of a man while his priestess had become a woman in the snap of a finger. He still had to crane his neck to look Sesshomaru in the eye. “You don’t think about the years yet, do you?”

“A pointless endeavor.”

He scoffed. “One day you’ll blink and the world will be gone.”

His dirty hands found the folds of his sleeves and took purchase there. His face was closer. He’d risen to the balls of his feet to meet him head on. “You told me to come find you.”

No one had come this close to him since he was a child. There was Rin, but she understood the importance of permission. Rin respected distance where Inuyasha barreled ahead and took what he wanted. The boy was a brazen brat to the core.

But even he would never cling to him like this. “Stand down, Inuyasha.”

“ _You_ told _me_. You told me to do it. Just like…” He wetted his lips and the rims of his eyes glistened. Sesshomaru was transfixed by the sheen. “You said to find you and you said you’ll come around, because when you’re alone it’ll be because you have no choice anymore. And I can’t…”

A pulse as panicked as rabbit’s was clouding his ears. It wasn’t mere salt he had smelled before, it was the putrid leak of his tears. Inuyasha’s lashes were wet and sticking together, thick black ink strokes sweeping out from honey-gold eyes. His nose and cheek were dusted pink. The expression was foreign to him. Sesshomaru knew his brother in scowls and screams and grimaces, hot tempers and long sulks, gritted teeth. Rin knew more. His priestess knew the most. These were soft things that should be reserved for her eyes only. He ought to avert his gaze but there was no where else to look.

When felt his brother’s breath dusting his lips, he could no longer bear it.

The boy went flying.

He landed in a spray of grass and earth, rolling twice and knocking his elbows like the graceless brute he always had been. It was an ugly sight. He needed some sense beat into him, and none but Sesshomaru was present to do it.

“Let go of whatever misbegotten notions you’ve gathered. I told you nothing. And you need nothing.” He turned his back to retreat. There was no dealing with the hanyou like this, all stink and tears and a fretfully pounding heart. He shouldn’t have let him near to begin with. “Return to your village. Bring your ramblings to your priestess or swallow them whole.”

He did not turn back to watch his brother return to his feet. He could hear his ambling, the swish of his robes and the bitter burn of his scoff.

“You gotta have it your way. Always your way, when you want it, never a damn moment sooner.”

Sesshomaru declined to retort as he took to the air. He had no patience for tantrums.

* * *

The window sunk into the door with the whirr of a bee. He thrust his head out and his hair whipped behind him in one blast. Inuyasha was elated, eyes wide, craning out neck and shoulders to watch the mountainside whizz by. Exactly like a dog.

“Shit! It’s just like flying! Oi, Kagome, is there one of these small enough to bring back through the well?”

“Get back _inside_ , you maniac!”

She yanked him by the elbow into his seat and fought with the wind for the rest of his hair.

“What the fuck was that for?”

“You need to wear your hat in public! And act normal!”

“I am normal! And this is nowhere near public! It’s a mountain!”

“It’s a public road, anyone can come and see—”

There was a chortle from the driver’s seat. “Kagome, I’m sure it’s fine. Let him enjoy himself! It’s his first time in a car, isn’t it? Inuyasha, isn’t this fun?”

“Now that we’re not stuck behind a thousand other cars, sure.”

“Ah, well. That’s city traffic for you. But this is much nicer, hmm?”

“You bet!” He turned back to Kagome. “How about it? Is there a small one we can take?”

“No.”

“It’s faster than your stupid bike. Maybe you could keep up for a change.”

Kagome thrust her face into her hands. “Forget it! We wouldn’t be able to get gas in the Feudal era, so it’d break down somewhere and we’d get stuck! And I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re only driving on man-made roads! They’re all paved smooth. A car won’t work in the bush, trust me.”

“But…if there was a smaller one…”

“There isn’t and it would never fit down the well anyway! Besides, they're super dangerous. People get hurt in them all the time.”

“I’m afraid I would have to agree, Inuyasha. Kagome doesn’t have her license, so she might drive you right into a tree.”

“ _Mom!_ ”

As if explicitly to spite her, the next passing vehicle was a tidy motorbike with a thrumming engine. Inuyasha gaped at it openly and craned to watch it disappear around the bend.

“You liar. That one could fit down the well easy!”

Kagome sunk into her seat. “Mama, I thought this was supposed to be a relaxing girl’s trip.”

“I know, I know, Kagome. But if you ask me, both of you deserve a little spoiling after all your hard work. A weekend at the hot springs should do the trick. A little spa time, some good food. And how could I say no to that face?” She adjusted the rear-view mirror to give Inuyasha a wink. He smirked insufferably. Kagome draped her weary head over the high arch of the back seat.

“At least you’re not motion sick…”

* * *

They made it to the hot springs by ten after three, and fortunately for Inuyasha there were enough folk milling around in robes that he only looked slightly stupid standing next to them. That hair was the real problem, Kagome thought privately. And the Tessaiga, and if anyone got close they could tell there were no contacts on Earth that gave you a slit pupil that grew thick and shrunk thin, just like a cat’s. Oh, and there were his claws, and his silly bare feet, more claws on the toes, and his open gawking at the most banal conveniences, and while we’re talking open mouths let’s not forget those fangs!

Kagome was sweating hard and the midday sun had nothing to do with it. Her mother slung an arm over her shoulders as their baggage was loaded on a trolley, giving her a knowing shake on her way to the reception desk. “It’ll be fine. People always prefer that things stay normal, don’t they? So they’ll make up some excuse in their mind for him, and that will be that. You’ll see.”

Kagome doubted it very much. Still, it was terribly endearing to watch Inuyasha marvel at the place.

“I thought you’d all done away with the wild. Put up your never-ending cities.”

“No, no, there’s laws against that. Some places are protected. They have to stay natural.” She glanced over the elegant lodge and the cabins beyond. “Um. Mostly.”

“Better than nothing. You can breathe way better up here.” He took a deep breath, nose to the air and eyes closed and serene as she’d ever seen him. “I can’t smell any youkai.”

“You won’t.”

“Even this far out?”

“Just the one.” She poked him in the ribs and he growled. A minor tussle ensued as he tried to return the favor.

Her mother trotted back with three sets of room keys. “It’s a good thing it’s not a busy season, huh? There was no trouble adjusting the booking for an extra person. Oh! Look, you two, see that? Just up past the springs?”

They looked. “It’s just more rocks, Mama.”

“No, no, that’s the one. See? Like it’s all curled up, with its tail by its face.”

“What’s curled up?” Inuyasha squinted hard. Kagome gasped.

“Oh! Yeah! Look there, just above the cliff face. That’s the one this place is named after. They say when rocks fall off the side of it that it’s snoring.”

Inuyasha tilted his head. “Eh…I guess. Looks more like a dog to me.”

“Well it’s not. It’s Sleeping Wolf Mountain.” She smiled up at him. “You’re just biased.”

“Whatever.”

“Let me get a picture of you two with it!”

Inuyasha blinked and Kagome groaned. “He doesn’t even know what that is.”

“I know what _pictures are_ , Kagome!”

“It’s different now,” she retorted.

“What better time to learn?” Her mother began to scoot them into position. “Besides, it’s not a proper vacation if you don’t make some memories.”

As he always did with her family (and so rarely did with her), Inuyasha obeyed without question, even if he didn’t have the slightest idea what was happening when the shutter clicked or why it was important that he smiled. No doubt he’ll look like a clueless doof once they were developed. Some memory. Kagome glanced to the side and bit her lip when she caught his profile. All his squawking and snarling could be forgiven when the light hit him just right. The sun dashed bright lines down his slender nose and tickled the thick lashes shading his whisky eyes.

Maybe it would be nice to have a memento to pull out on a rainy day. Just in case.

* * *

Kagome had insisted time and again that she was not from a rich family. He could usually believe it, as the few times he visited Tokyo he could see houses far larger than hers. Some buildings were so big that couldn’t possibly be for one family. Unless the lord’s cousins, their other cousins, and then their servants and the servant’s cousins and their whole army to boot were all piled up in stack on top of one another, until their home was damn near kissing the sky. There were hundreds like that, clustered around in a lump and glinting with black and silver glass instead of wood or stone. No one had explained what _that_ was about just yet. Wasn’t glass delicate?

Yet the Higurashi family had the money, and moreover, the freedom, to do frivolous things like this. The one time Kagome wasn’t whining about tests she had to waste three days soaking at an onsen, shopping for trinkets and getting massaged. All for the mere pleasure of living. Sounded like rich folk hobbies to him.

Her mother kept “taking pictures” with that dainty black box, and it was only after Kagome dragged him to look at the intricately detailed art on the wall that he conceded that maybe, just maybe, the little box could capture moments just as clear as they were seen in life. He just didn’t get _how_ , but decided he’d rather surrender before she could call him stupid. He already felt like a moron whenever he came here.

Once they got the food out Inuyasha stopped complaining. He didn’t recognize the words bandied around him, but the enthusiasm from the rest of the guests was obvious. “Oooh, it’s French!” Kagome had squealed with sparkling eyes. “I’ve always wanted to go to Paris! _Bon-joo-a! Soop du joo!_ ”

Inuyasha leaned away from her with a rising brow. “Are you okay?”

She had ignored him. Which was fine because the waiter had set down his plate: a cut of tender beef drizzled with a fatty egg and vinegar sauce, partnered with greens flavored by sour citrus and potatoes cut into dainty sticks, fried and tossed in salt. Once he’d scraped the sauce off (Kagome had permitted it with a soft apology, “Oh, there’s a lot of butter in there, you’ve never had that right? I should have warned you…”) the meat had him outright salivating. The “frites” were like the chips she brought back for him but heartier, and he ended up taking half of her mother’s portion thereafter. Dessert was more foreign treats, sweet tarts filled with cream that was flavored with a fruit both like and unlike yuzu called lemons. It was topped by a stiff and sticky sugar dollop that had been whipped to look like clouds. They were so sweet his tongue turned sour the minute he swallowed them, yet he still demanded seconds. 

After the feast they’d gone for an evening soak to finish the day. He was all set to pass on that. He hated to admit it but this realm was best traveled with a guide, and neither Kagome nor her mother would be able to follow him into the men’s baths. Mrs. Higurashi shushed him and argued that this was the whole point of the trip, and he had nothing to be afraid of, being much tougher than the average salaryman. Kagome was a touch concerned but took it as the perfect opportunity to fuck with his hair. Under the guise of hiding his ears and against all his protests, she seized her chance to brush it from bottom to top, delicate as she teased the tangles from the ends. She worked upwards from there until she was stroking straight down from his scalp, soft as can be so the bristles wouldn’t scrape him. His face had flushed deeper the closer she got to his head. By the time she was gathering up sections tickling the back of his neck he was two shades away from matching his haori. She twisted and swooped the thing around, pinning it in place tidily. The look was supplanted with a bandana that did all the work of obscuring his ears, because she couldn't get the bun that far forward without it looking ridiculous. His secret would remain safe. Though he got some curious looks, most of the bathers were happy to ignore him. They were mostly older men anyway, flabby in the belly and happy to keep each other company with meandering anecdotes. He eavesdropped for some time, but tuned them out within minutes. Whatever a salaryman did, it wasn’t very interesting.

At one point there had been a great rumbling. Mountain rocks coming loose in the distance, plummeting into the trees. A few guests were spooked but most were laughing. “There the old dog goes, snoring again!” “What are you scared of? We’re not in the way of anything. Even the hiking trail over there goes far above any danger.”

All things said and done, the day had been nothing short of luxurious.

Yet here he was, outdoors at the break of midnight. An niggling weariness had nestled into his bones, which he blamed on the lullaby of long soaks in the springs. Even Kagome had been yawning faster than usual. She disappeared into her room straight after drying off and never re-emerged. Now he sat half-dozing on the deck railing of the cabin, clad in his usual robes, which is where Mrs. Higurashi found him.

Her hands clapped together in full approval. “You look so refreshed, Inuyasha! This was a great idea, wasn’t it?”

She beamed and he had no choice but to nod along. She took it as permission to lean beside him against the rail, bewitched by the sky. “It’s late. You should be in bed.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Why not?”

“I dunno.” Inuyasha couldn’t look her in the eye for some reason. She was so kind and cheery all the damn time, yet others there was a pointed something behind the words. Nothing dangerous, just potent. “Is Kagome—”

“Fast asleep. She’s lucky, I’ve never been able to put my head down and be done with it. I toss and turn for ages.” She smiled again but there was a tightness at the edges, he was certain now. As much as social niceties escaped him, even he could feel the air was thick with meaning. “Say, Inuyasha, maybe this is for the best. I’ve been meaning to ask you…”

Had his heart sped up suddenly? “Ask what?”

“Well—”

She flinched as another crack and rumble fired off. Down more rocks went from the slumbering wolf. “Goodness! That scared me.”

“It shouldn’t. It’s so far away.” Inuyasha tossed his hair to the side. “And even if it was close, I’d get you both out of the way.”

“You’re that fast?”

“Of course I am,” he nodded.

She folded her arms. Then unfolded them again, pulling at one set of fingers with the other. “Well, that’s one thing. I just…She doesn’t tell me much, you know? About what happens to you over there. And I know you work very hard. I have to thank you for that. I do. But sometimes she comes back.” She took a deep breath, and the corners of that perpetual smile twitched. She looked older and younger than her age at once, paper thin and insurmountably pretty. A vision of Kagome in twenty years. “And she’s washed her clothes. She does a good job of it, but sometimes there’s faded patches on them. Like she’s washed out some blood—”

Her lips parted, her eyes were overbright. She looked to be fishing for her next words. Instead she crumpled into tears.

“Oh, what a mess. Forgive me Inuyasha—”

“Wh—what? Forgive what?” His voice had gotten squeezed up like someone had pinched his balls. He leapt off the railing and tried to grab her shoulders. Her hands. Something. Anything to make it stop, he couldn’t live with himself making Kagome’s mother cry. She was so unfailingly kind when all he did was cause her daughter trouble, the sight of it was stabbing him in the most tender pit of his gut. “Stop that! There’s nothing to forgive! Please stop crying! I’m sorry!”

“No, no.” She sniffed and covered her eyes. “Don’t be. I’ve just never said it aloud before.” When her hands flew away there was a puffy red mess left behind but she marched onward, arresting him by the shoulders. “I don’t understand it. And I don’t understand you. But I can tell you’re a good man. And you’re doing your best. It’s just hard to watch her go sometimes. Does she get hurt?”

His heart clattered against his ribs. He could lie. That would be monstrously stupid, but he could.

“Not if I can help it.”

Mrs. Higurashi was blinking back more tears. “Do _you_ get hurt?”

He frowned. She wasn’t his mother, she shouldn’t be bothered by it. Kagome had no idea how fortunate she was. All the family he had to watch his back was a one-armed asshole with sword theft on the brain. “Well. Yeah. But it’s fine.”

“You can outrun an avalanche and that’s still not enough?” A fair point. He had no rebuttal for that. “Do you see what I mean?”

He made a gruff noise in the back of his throat. “Of course I do.” He shrugged out of her grip and they settled for holding each other’s hands, and his pulse calmed some. “But better me because I can take it. And I win. I’m still here, and so is Kagome. I’ll return her to you. No matter what.”

“Don’t you have anyone to…” She faltered as Inuyasha pulled a face (does he have anyone, what a joke) and waved the thought away. “Well, what sort of things are you fighting? Please. I just need to know.”

Another burst of rocks ripped through the night air. Both jumped and waited, watching close for more. Mrs. Higurashi glowered at the crude silhouette of the wolf. “I suppose he must be gassy.”

Inuyasha was too torn to laugh at that.

“What things, Inuyasha? All I know about youkai is from kid’s stories and whatever Papa talks about. Or old superstitions, like this silly mountain. It’s not helpful at all. They’re powerful, aren’t they? Strong like you.”

He weighed his words with a soundly furrowed brow. “Some.” He knew Kagome would be mad if he went too far explaining. Youkai were deadly and wicked and volatile, and he was never sure what tricks might be coming next. “There’s a lot of ‘em, but they can be pipsqueaks just like anything. Or big and nasty, just like anything. But the important thing is that we can take them. Kagome’s plenty strong in her own right. If she wanted to she could waste me.”

Mrs. Higurashi pulled a hand loose to clear up her face. “I doubt that she would ever do that.”

“But she could. She’s a powerful priestess. That means she can repel and destroy plenty of youkai. She’s got the upper hand on everything. Trust me. She comes back with blood on her clothes, right? But she doesn’t come back hurt.” The woman considered this with a slow shake of her head. “That’s because she’s good at what she does. And the blood is usually mine anyway, so don’t worry about it.”

“That’s not much more reassuring. I don’t want _you_ hurt either.”

He didn’t know why that made his guts squirm, but it did. It wasn’t as if Inuyasha had done her any favours. Why should she give a shit? “Keh! I get better quick. I told you it’s okay so don’t worry about it. The point is, Kagome will always come home to you. No matter what happens.”

The unease looked to be fading. She was inhaling smoothly now. Mrs. Higurashi wiped her face one last time and clapped both her hands back on his. An affirmation of sorts, even if the matter was far from settled. “Make sure you do too, Inuyasha.”

He nodded, if nothing else than just to humour her. When you cut down to the matter he doubted his own fate was important, as long as Kagome came back in one piece.

She sighed and crossed her arms over her middle. “I just don’t understand. What happened to them? If they were all so strong, where did they go?”

Inuyasha’s ears twitched. That was a question that circled his head at least a hundred times. A few centuries was long enough for humans to make a mess of things, but to a powerful youkai? Or even just a patient one, that caused no trouble and kept to itself? That was nothing. That was an ordinary lifespan. So how and when did the old ways die? His lips pursed as he batted the unsavory notion back and forth.

“Maybe we slew them all and were done with it.”

She laughed and he felt better at once. “Even little Shippo?”

Inuyasha stuck out his tongue. “He’ll be the first to go.”

“Stop.” She patted his arm. “My goodness. Thank you for humoring me. Don’t tell her I said anything, all right? She doesn’t need her old mother nagging after her.”

“What do you mean old? You’re not half as wrinkled as Kaede.”

“Aaah, and Kagome told me the monk was the flirt.”

“Eh?” He looked to her blankly. She grinned back.

“Nevermind, Inuyasha. Come on, we should get some sleep.”

They would do nothing of the sort.

A blast like the bellow of a resurrected volcano tore the night in two. Inuyasha had the woman in his arms and down on their knees in a flash. Cosmic light swirled at their backs, threatened to blind them if they dared turn to face it. Boulders crashed down the side of the mountain with the calamity of charging soldiers. Trees bent under their rolls and cracked dead.

The tiny hairs along his arm and the back of his neck were standing on end. For a moment he thought he must be imagining things, but the sensation only intensified. He had never felt such a thing in this realm before: demonic energy. Waves upon waves of it.

There was a sizzle and another crack. People were waking up screaming. Kagome called for them from inside the lodge, her voice high and harsh.

“Mama! Inuyasha!”

“ _Kagome!_ ”

The unholy energy seemed to sap from the air all at once. Winked out like a lantern. Yet the light behind them got brighter still. The crackling fizz was at their backs now. The wooden planks of the porch yawned under enormous weight, but Inuyasha hadn’t heard anything come close, hadn’t smelled any creature nearby.

He twisted back to look.

High above them and comprised of white light was the shape of a beast. It stood taller than the lodge by far, one foot on their deck and the other three suspended in air. It looked doggish, but any details were obscured by its glow. A growl thundered within an unknowable throat and shook the floor where they crouched. A scream rattled his ear. Mrs. Higurashi was fit to faint. She hadn’t been able to resist looking either.

Kagome threw the screen door open. His sword was in her hand. “Inuyasha!”

He knew at once what to do.

Sweeping her mother upright he darted forward, uncaring if her feet met the ground. He pushed her into her daughter’s arms and snatched the sword in exchange. The woman scrambled to get upright, trying to push Kagome back inside and shield her. Ever a protector, even against the horrifying unknown. Kagome was urging her to run for cover as Inuyasha unsheathed his blade.

The beast moved its head down. Inuyasha leapt up and swung hard.

His sword cut into nothing. Indistinguishable teeth found the middle of him and clamped down tight.

Kagome screamed after them, but the shining horror had turned away with Inuyasha trapped in its jaws. It darted through the air and scores of tourists shrieked in an ear-splitting chorus.

Kagome and her mother looked on helplessly. The older woman shrieked again and slapped Kagome’s shoulder, pointing up the mountain.

“Kagome, _look!_ ”

The lumpy formation that once was a slumbering wolf had vanished. A flat ledge was all that was left behind, and the beast was gallivanting for it.

* * *

Whatever had pushed Inuyasha over the brink, he appeared to have forgotten about it. Sesshomaru didn’t catch his scent again. He was left instead to ruminate on the odd encounter.

The chill between them had defrosted over these years, but never to the extent that Inuyasha should come to him for comfort. It was too bold. That was a human quality, no doubt nourished by their constant coddling of him. He’d taken root in that ridiculous village like the very tree that trapped him there for fifty years, sated in carrying out their whims. Inuyasha would chop their fireword, tend their fields, guard their borders and mind their young. He and the priestess could bear no children of their own, yet there was a perpetual a passel of tykes pulling at their pantlegs each time Sesshomaru deigned to visit Rin. They held steadfast to their goal of saving strays and protecting humans, and so were celebrated fixtures among the peasants there.

So he had no need to come clawing after Sesshomaru’s heels. There were always sentimental mortals swarming him, why chase him across such a distance? He had looked nothing like himself. Disgraceful. On the verge of tears and wedging up against him as if to beg for an embrace. Standing on his toes to bring their faces on even ground. The sight would flash in his mind and Sesshomaru’s thoughts would scatter. The sound of his ragged voice would rise unbidden and his middle would give a lurch.

Once Jaken had asked him why his fingertips had lingered on his lips. He knocked him aside and said nothing of the ghostly breath he could feel there.

Three weeks after his brother had nearly snotted up his sleeves, he found himself being followed.

“My lord, isn’t that one of the wolf clan?”

The wolf prince no longer kicked up dust storms in his wake, but he could cut across trails in the blink of an eye. Still not fast enough to catch up while Sesshomaru was mid-flight, so the whelp took to hurling rocks at his ankles. Jaken ducked a throw and quacked indignantly. “The nerve! Shall I dispose of him with the Staff of Heads, my Lord?”

Sesshomaru had planned to ignore him, but it was highly irritating.

With a flash of his whip the next stone cleaved in two, and the wolf prince abruptly found himself face to face with the Lord of the West.

“Speak now or never speak again.”

The wolf balked. Sesshomaru knew of him, but not his name nor his purpose. Another ant on a hill. Surely no one who would be missed, if he proved irritating.

“Shit,” he remarked. Sesshomaru raised a claw and the wolf stepped back. “Easy! I’m not looking to piss you off or pick a fight!”

“You’ll succeed at neither.”

He clicked his mouth shut and reached behind him. Strapped over his shoulders was a long parcel, swaddled in several furs. Curious, considering that the summer heat beat down hard on both of their backs.

“You’re his brother, aren’t ya?”

Sesshomaru said nothing. He was still as stone in the body as his mind leapt to a thousand conclusions. That tightly wrapped package was long and chillingly slender. The wolf was peeling back the furs with a grim set jaw. A dark rumble laced his words.

“Some bandits on the mountain roads were pissing and moaning about a wasted effort. Said they’d robbed a guy and it turned out he had no money, and his sword was rusted to shit. They were wondering what they could get for the holy necklace.”

Sesshomaru watched his face for telltale signs of deceit. What he implied was ludicrous. _Human_ bandits. “You’re lying.”

The wolf fixed him with eyes so livid blue he could swear they glowed. Fury storms, like swooping waves lit by lightning.

“I wouldn’t shit you over this.”

He unfurled the last flap. The sheath was black. The handle ratted and frayed.

“Tessaiga?!” Jaken yelped. “Where did you get that, impudent wolf? How could such a lowly creature as you— _ow!_ ”

Jaken went head over heels and the wolf non-chalantly wiped his kicking foot on the ground. “I couldn’t get the rosary. It snapped when I tried. I think it was pretty old.”

The summer sun was hellish, but Sesshomaru could only feel ice. Prickles at his skin with points like shards, frost blooming over metal.

“They had his robes too. That’s why they stopped him. They recognized the material. Fuck, _I_ wouldn’t know fire rat fur just from looking at it, who woulda thunk some dumbass sons of bitches—”

Unheeding, he reached for the sword and it repelled him with sizzling sparks. Just as he knew it would. He could not mistake the blade for any other after all these years, yet his eyes blew wider in disbelief.

“Yeah, that. Why do you think I had it wrapped up so tight, idiot?”

The wolf choked on his insults when Sesshomaru took him by the throat. The sword and furs tumbled to the earth, his toes scarcely brushing the ground.

“Where is he?” Sesshomaru seethed. “Where is Inuyasha? Why have you not brought his effects to _him?_ ”

The wolf wrestled for purchase and answered in thin hisses.

* * *

If one had a blunt sense of smell and didn’t stray too closely, he would look like he was dozing. He was upright against the moss-laden boulder with his legs tilted one way, head drooped to the side and hair spilling about. He was covered in pelts like he expected snowfall to interrupt his daytime nap.

A step closer would introduce you to the rancid air. The way his skin mottled nearest to the earth in inky blooms of purple. That his eyes weren’t truly closed. If you peered past the shield of black lashes you saw a dull stare fixated on nothing. His blunt teeth peeked between parched lips.

Wolves yipped and bowed their heads, scuttling out of the way as Koga led him to the cursed site. Jaken had been told to stand watch over Ah-Un, far away. He wanted no witnesses to this scene. Which was why he was infuriated to find two more feeble youkai shaking at the sight of him.

“Koga, you’re back! I thought you might—” Vacant wide eyes cast in his direction, then skittered back to their leader. “Uh, I thought you were looking for the fox?”

“No sign of him.”

“So this is…”

Koga glowered and the lackeys clamped up.

Sesshomaru stood at a distance. His sight was too keen to be fooled by the dignities bestowed by the wolf pack. Pelts for cover, his stolen clothes replaced. His neck washed free of browning blood. He surely hadn’t died in such a resplendent position.

“Fool.”

The word was uttered softly, but wolves heard just as well as dogs.

Koga cleared his throat. “Honestly, I don’t think he was right in the head. I don’t even know what he was doing up here.”

Sesshomaru glanced over his shoulder at him. The air was fat with unspoken words.

“Kagome died.” A fact that swelled the curr’s throat shut and made the other two divert their gaze. “Bit over a month ago. She held out a while. A lot longer than those other two that hung around with ‘em.”

He’d been wet at the eyes back then. His breath had been shallow. Dirt at his cheek.

“Eighty six years old,” supplied one wolf.

“Strong woman, that one. Wasted on the puppy if you ask me. Would have taken her myself if things hadn’t shaken out the way they did.”

Sesshomaru glared. “Then I suppose would it be your corpse laid on this mountain?”

Koga laughed. It was utterly humorless. “I don’t turn human when the moon’s gone.”

That was the insult of it all. No one was bold enough to say it. All his life, Inuyasha had guarded his time of weakness with unparalleled secrecy. Only through accidents or foolhardy missions to save the lives of his worthless pet humans did the truth leak out. Prior to their interference he had taken great pains to avoid danger, aware of mortal frailty in a way that Sesshomaru could never be.

What had happened when the bandits found the lone traveller walking these trails? Did they take one look to the robes hewn from youkai fur, to his enchanted rosary, to his sheathed katana, and mistake him for a rich man? A holy one? A warrior fallen from grace? How many were there to surround him?

The line drawn through his throat was as crisp as a brushstroke. The blade had cut through unfettered. Had Inuyasha _fought_ them at all?

“The priestess passed a month ago, you say?”

_Always your way, when you want it._

“About that. Yeah. We all came by to help bury her. He wouldn’t say a word, then. Should’ve…stuck around, maybe.” Koga shook his head. “Truth be told he used to annoy the shit out of me, but that was just how he was. You got used to it.”

Sesshomaru could feel the push of poison in his fingers. It would drip from his claws if left unchecked. He flexed them once and resumed stillness. “And what of the bandits?”

The animals scattered around them growled. This time when Koga laughed he meant it. “You kidding me? We ripped them apart on the spot.”

Though he knew they were in the right and that he would have slain the wolves without question had they failed to follow through, Sesshomaru took no relief in the matter. He now had little recourse to address the black, bilious smoke filling his chest. Slaughtering humans was distasteful and far too easy, but he would have made a meal of it. Regrettable.

“Leave.”

The pack looked between each other. The wolves trotted forward, trepidatious until their two shepherds jogged ahead. Koga squared off with him, his jaw clenched and shoulders thrown back strong. He supposed there were threads of a leader in him. Pity there weren’t many brains to match.

“You may be his brother, but you’re not the only guy who gets a say in laying him to rest. You hear me? I’m finding the fox and we’re coming back to finish it proper.”

“That won’t be necessary. You’ve done your share.” Sesshomaru strode towards the prone figure. Koga clucked his tongue.

“We’ll see about that.” Off he sped at last.

He waited until the wolves were well out of earshot. The corpse was waiting patiently for him.

Corpse. He closed his eyes. It made little sense.

Perhaps Inuyasha had trusted his brother would come to his aid. If not at the right moment, then later. He could accept such foolhardy notions. He would have been addled after the death of his odd priestess, the wolf prince was right about that. Sesshomaru moved in closer and found that if one wanted, they could believe his last breath had been spent smiling. The corner of his mouth slanted upwards on one side, did it not?

He bent closer to inspect it. Inuyasha gazed dumbly in the opposite direction. From here his expression looked downright pleased with itself. _Insipid mongrel_. How like him to die in this shameful mortal body. It was as if he wanted to make this task as repugnant as possible.

Tenseiga was unusually quiet as his hand floated over the hilt. Even this close to the second son of the Inu no Taisho its hum was a tired trickle. Nothing like he expected.

Sesshomaru hesitated. He’d never used it on the half-breed. The sword should be thrumming in want of kindness. If not for compassion, then for the blood that ran in both their veins. With a displeased curl in his lip he unsheathed the blade and saw only one spirit sitting atop his chest. It hissed defiantly. Sesshomaru cut it down at once.

A soft thump sounded within the body. The eyelids fluttered shut. The pale sheen didn’t leave his skin but it looked fuller around the cheeks. The line on his throat was sealing shut.

“Rise, Inuyasha.”

His brother opened his eyes. They leaned more violet than they did black or brown. Even when human he remained an oddity. They settled blearily on Sesshomaru as a streak of amber bled out from the pupil. The roots of his hair began to pale.

He tilted his head back and smiled for real, but did not rise.

“Have you gone deaf? I said stand.”

His teeth were still blunt between his lips. The spill of white from his scalp stopped shy of his rounded fleshy ears, and all the shift his eyes showed was a band of gold striping his left eye. Inuyasha squirmed and made to speak.

Then he wilted again. Eyes drifting shut and mouth still parted. His heartbeat tapered and died in the same sickly stream it woke with.

Sesshomaru was certain he was mistaken. He watched with a burning stare but the figure didn’t stir. He twisted his grip on the sword and swung again. There was nothing to cut but he did it a second time. A third.

Inuyasha’s mouth did move then. Sesshomaru inhaled sharply and bent once more, sword tight in hand. He hadn’t imagined it. The edge of his mouth had twitched. Twice.

Something twisted from the inside. Sesshomaru watched as a maggot, fat and glistening and dumb, tumbled from Inuyasha’s lips and bounced onto the furs. It writhed in nauseating turns on his lap.

All that was heavy inside him dropped out through his feet. He was dizzy. Sesshomaru could hear his breath coming in heady whisps but he could scarcely feel it. He threw back the pelts and nearly recoiled. Insects weaved under and over his clothes, licked at the waxen skin of his hands. There were messier wounds in the gut, garish blows from a knife, which the vermin dove in and out of with relish. They’d settled in for a feast.

Tenseiga could only revive flesh that was whole. Anything less would shortly return to death.

In phantom tones, he could hear the squelch of blades in a human belly. He could envision the stumble to the ground thereafter, how one filth-laden thief might have gripped his hair, made clean work of his neck after savaging his middle.

Sesshomaru cast a long shadow over the reclining form of his brother. The parasites wriggled with glee within it, like they meant to celebrate this victory for him. He couldn’t do it himself.

* * *

“That was one of them. Oh no, oh god, that was one of them wasn’t it? Kagome!”

Her mother was not taking this well. She was ivory white all over and trembling, eyes glued to where the brilliant creature had galloped off and vanished. Her hand trembled as she kept pointing over, so hopelessly fixated on the insanity of it all. “That’s youkai! That’s what they are! Isn’t it? Where is it taking him?!”

“I don’t know!” Her hands were shaking as she threaded the loops. The bone-deep exhaustion she’d been fighting off all night wouldn’t release her even now, and she could feel her heart clattering to panicked beats. So Kagome doubled down on her effort. If she was going to rip her shoelaces trying to tie them mid-fit, so be it. She wasn’t chasing after the thing barefoot, she was already at a huge disadvantage in the modern era. No allies, no weapons, and her best defender stuck playing the damsel. How could she possibly have expected this?

“Don’t go!” her mother shrieked. Her arms were around her daughter at once. “Kagome, it’ll kill you! I know it!”

“Mama, I have to! I’m the only one who _can_ go, please! Please, Mama!”

“It carried him off like he was _nothing_ , you can’t tell me you’ll be all right!”

“If I don’t go then who’s going to save Inuyasha?!”

Her mother looked as if she were struck with a sound backhand. “Can’t we…Can’t we call the police?”

The woman had been rendered utterly helpless. It was killing Kagome to do this; bad enough that Souta had to get involved with that creepy Noh mask, now she was watching her mother fall to pieces thinking her daughter would die. It was a nightmare coming to life. “Mama, you know I’m right. I have to go. Please just trust me.”

She drew her in for a brisk hug, then ripped away before she could hold her back.

“ _Kagome!_ ” her mother shrieked. The sound rattled the marrow of her bones.

Her pleas didn’t stop, even when Kagome gunned for the patio door. There was a small stairway off the porch, and that would lead to the recreational grounds, and from there it should be easy to find a path over to the rock-face. 

“Mama, you’re gonna hate this but you have to stay here,” she called back, already across the deck and popping the gate open. “Promise me!”

A heavy bang was her answer. Kagome whipped around and saw no one in the doorway. She retreated a step. That was an angle she could catch sight of one slippered foot at, limp on the ground behind the open glass doors. Her mother had collapsed. “ _Mom?!_ ”

She was by her side at once. Her mother was awake and shifting, but she looked oddly sallow and dazed. “What did I…what?”

Kagome bit her lips tight. She couldn’t leave her here like this. Something was wrong. Maybe she was too close to the creature, there could have been some adverse side effect to looking at its true face. A poison, or a drain of life force. A modern day Medusa.

“Don’t worry. Let’s, um, let’s get you up.” Her hands trembled as she threaded them under her mother’s shoulders. She felt a lurch in her chest as she took on her weight. It wasn’t like when Sango fell, or Miroku, or even little Shippo. It was her mother. Family. She should have been safe here, and now Kagome would be at fault if anything went wrong.

“We’re getting you to a doctor. Okay?” She was already hobbling them down the stairs. Her mother was finding her feet but her lean was heavy and her gait clumsy. She clung to her daughter for dear life.

“I have no idea what’s happened to me, I swear, I’m not trying to slow you down…”

“I know, Mama.”

As they hit the main path, other shouts for help clawed at their ears. A woman crawled on her deck, legs dragging limp behind her like the bones had vanished. Another man was seizing on the footpath, his wife fighting to get his head on her lap.

“I can’t feel my legs…”

“Help! Help, my husband, he’s having a fit!”

“I can’t see, I can’t see anything anymore!”

The pair gawped around them. Everyone who had come out to their decks, everyone who had seen the creature was wilting on their feet. Kagome pressed her mother closer and it still wasn’t tight enough.

* * *

The first thing he could deduce (and it was fucking difficult trying to deduce shit in midair, let him tell you) was that this thing wasn’t planning on killing him yet. The teeth could have chomped down and been done with it but they weren’t even drawing blood, even without the protection of his fire rat robes. Secondly, much like how it was formless save for the edges of the body, it only seemed solid where it wanted to be. A lesson hard learned after trying to stick Tessaiga up its nose. He was slicing and stabbing a whole lot of nothing, and they were almost at the plateau.

And there was the third thing he could deduce: that had never been an ordinary pile of rocks. Because of course it couldn’t be. Heaven forbid Inuyasha try soaking in a fucking hot spring one night of his miserable life. Would this have happened if he hadn’t shown up? Or would it have come for Kagome instead? Maybe these sorts of things were happening all over regularly, and nobody knew about it because they were all convinced it was a load of bullshit. Like Mrs. Higurashi said it was.

They landed on the ledge with a thud and he was discarded at once. Inuyasha couldn’t right himself before he fell and caught the worst of it on his left hip and both elbows. Only miracles kept Tessaiga in his grasp after the impact.

He rolled to his feet, stance low and sword at the ready. This would be a challenge. Unless the creature got more solid, how would he strike it? If it only had form in the places it touched him, then it would be impossible to battle. Kagome’s arrows would do better work with their holy power. Could he count on her to be in pursuit?

Except she hadn’t brought any arrows. She left them all five hundred years in the past because they were both sucker enough to think that for once, they might not need to kick some ass in the middle of the night. Inuyasha glowered as the beast crouched to look him in the eye. He’d never make that mistake again.

“Come on and try it,” he snarled. The creature cocked its head. Or so he thought. It was difficult to tell which way it moved when was facing him straight on. “Stop messing around! I don’t give a shit what you are, I’ll take you on!”

It responded by blaring at the edges. The form smudged. First bigger, then with a lightning crackle it zipped into itself, one compact white sun hovering in sneezing distance of his nose. It was elongating. Two legs. Two feet. A long train of fur.

Inuyasha nearly dropped his sword.

It was Sesshomaru.

Hands came towards him, colorlessly pale and glowing with the same formless intensity the beast had. They locked around his shoulders. This glimmering pillar in the shape of his brother had materialized in the slim space between Inuyasha’s body and his outstretched blade. Closer than he should ever be. Inuyasha flinched backwards and hit bedrock. Sesshomaru drew in even more. He was taller than he should be, a trick of the light show or his own sinking sanity losing its last foothold. There was no trace of color in his features. It was as if he had been etched into glass. Inuyasha’s eyes watered just looking at him, he burned so brightly.

“Inuyasha…” The voice echoed from leagues away, the deep timbre distorted like a summons from a dream.

He couldn’t smell him at all. But the hold on his shoulders was real, and so were his lips as they pressed hard to his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since he's already tried junk food and Japanese curry in canon, I thought it would be fun to introduce Inuyasha to some foreign cuisine. The meal he has at the onsen is Steak Bearnaise, which slices of steak drizzled in a creamy sauce made from egg yolks, butter, vinegar, and herbs. If you eat meat I highly recommend it. You could use the sauce on roasted veggies instead but sadly it is too egg-heavy to have a vegan equivalent. 
> 
> Additionally, I did as much research as I could and not only was dairy not eaten in medieval Japan, they could smell it on the Europeans and thought both they and their food stunk. Ergo, Inuyasha would not be a fan of butter. I made an exception for the lemon meringue tarts though, as the meringue and citrus probably mask the dairy well and he is a gluttonous teenage boy.
> 
> When we all get out of lockdown let's feast, okay? Stay safe out there.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments and kudos everyone! I knew peddling angst was gonna be a hard sell in this climate (and let's face it, a heavy Kagome focus in an Inucest fic is rarely a popular move), but as long as there's someone out there enjoying it, I'm happy! 
> 
> This chapter does contain a bit more with the corpse but nothing graphic. All the seedy details are saved for the smut this time.....enjoy. :)

What passed for a clinic at the spa was not prepared for half the guests to roll, crawl, or be dragged in at twenty past midnight for an emergency exam. Kagome had to sit her mother down outside. She was one of the lucky ones: still conscious, still talking, still walking.

It brought Kagome no comfort. The woman’s hands trembled in manners too close to the lost causes at an old folk’s home. She was only forty two.

She pressed a paper water cup into her hands and felt her lip wobble as her mother struggled to hold still enough to take it in. “Drink, Mama.” She stroked her hair and looked around, perspiring at her temples. Her own head was aching, and the pack of aspirin she’d brought was all the way back in their rooms.

Once the water was drained she took the cup from her and crouched low. “The doctor’s gonna look after you now, okay? But I have to go.” Her mother was looking right at her, but she could tell it was a struggle. The woman could barely keep her eyes open. All around them were people in varying states of dozing. Some had fallen onto each other for sickly naps while waiting to be seen. Others were gripping the hands of alert friends and family and forcibly jutting their head up to stay awake. They muttered incoherently.

“Inuyasha,” her mother whispered. Kagome squeezed her hands.

“Yes. I have to go find Inuyasha. So stay put, okay? I’ll be back soon.” She rose and pushed a kiss into her mother’s forehead. “I promise.”

“Seh…” She seemed to be fading into a dream. The word dangled between them unfinished as her mother rested her head against the wall. Kagome gulped air down a throat gone parched. Was she making the right choice? No daughter in their right mind would abandon their mother this way.

She surveyed the corridor and heard the drumline of her own pulse. All these people passing out. Losing the strength in their limbs. That had to be the work of this youkai. So it was her job to fix it.

She may never forgive herself if her mother got hurt, but the same was true for Inuyasha. The only chance she had to save both was to go after him.

Tucking hair behind her ears and biting her lip, Kagome broke away from her ailing mother. Slow at first, then faster, until she was outright sprinting. Kagome dodged the panicked staff and clientele as they wedged their way towards the emergency chambers with a tenacity no girl her age should know. She didn’t dare take another look behind her.

Her sneakers rapped on the tile floors like gunfire. So much time had been lost in getting her mother down to safety, and where did that leave Inuyasha? Near death? Fighting alone? Or fading away himself, succumbing to the spell of some beast several times his size? Whatever monster headache was working up in her gave a sick jolt and she hissed. She had no time for fretting and no time for headaches, either. Kagome shoved the exit open with twice the force needed and rocketed out of the lodge.

Several people were milling around in dazes. All of those that hadn’t seen the monster up close. She darted around them and they were too shocked to pay her much mind. Burbles of conversation hit her ears.

“They said it was a blinding light—” “—no Shuya, I’d heard it too, it sounded like a bomb!” “He kept muttering something about a dog—” “—knocked every rock in the formation loose, can’t you see? It’s empty now!”

The pockets of gawkers thinned as she came to a restricted sign. Right. The trails were closed. The map was harder to read in the dark, but to her delight the path to the Sleeping Wolf plateau seemed straightforward and marked as not too dangerous. “All right,” she whispered, and ducked under the divide.

There was the activity shed behind the gate. “All _right!_ ” she declared, diverting to a broad window at the side.

She had no tools or skill at picking locks, but anyone could put a rock through a window pane. She nabbed one the size of a ripe red mango and hurled it mightily. The glass shattered loud enough to shake her ear drums and she ducked quick as a lick, suddenly fearful. Did they have cameras or security guards catching all of this? Not the kind of stuff you had to worry about in Feudal Japan at all. What if she wound up with a criminal record?

Kagome shook her head and slapped her cheeks. “Get a grip!” There were a lot of things at stake here. She could fuss about her ruined life and reputation later.

There had been a good crate to stand on and a second rock to bash in all the worst looking glass, so it was easy as pie to hop into the shed. A quick flick of a light switch and she was looking at a pretty pathetic spread of activities.

“Tennis rackets?” Kagome tried to imagine it. Serving foul youkai justice with holy tennis balls. Yeah, that was a genius plan. So alternatively, there were fishing rods, softballs and mitts, skis and snowshoes for the winter, and what looked to be a butterfly net. No arrows. She rustled through a bright red tool kit instead and came out with a crow bar. “Better than nothing.”

With her shoddy weapon chosen, she turned around to take leave and her face fell at once.

Propped up by the garage door was a handsomely compact dirt bike. _Honda XR250_ was stamped over the shining plates, and there was a red crossed emergency sticker plastered to the side. The keys were in the ignition and a helmet was perched on the seat.

Kagome’s mouth settled in a wide humorless line. “I’ll never hear the end of this,” she muttered to no one.

* * *

“Sesshomaru, you—”

He was cut off again. Inuyasha shoved at his shoulders and got to watch his hands fizz clean through. Exactly like Tessaiga had with the giant dog. He had dropped the sword for real under this indescribably baffling assault. His brother had him by the mouth (the _mouth!_ ), one hand at his jaw either to hold him in place or squeeze his lips open, it was a toss up between the two. His other hand was arresting his sword arm. Sesshomaru had no mind for battle this time. Only lunacy.

Absolute barking lunacy.

Inuyasha tore his head to the side again. “You’re not him! What the fuck ever you are, you can’t—” He caught him mid-word this time and dragged his tongue along the flat top of his own, curling around it as he rolled their heads with the kiss. It was tender. It was longing. It was bursting every vein in Inuyasha’s head. He’d never kissed Kikyo like this. Never Kagome either, as much as he’d like to. He couldn’t imagine why his elder brother would breach a five hundred year gap just to maul him like a new bride. It had to be a trick. Or another spirit in disguise.

If they wanted to make out with him they picked the worst possible candidate, because having even a facsimile of Sesshomaru pushing up against him made his every hair stand on end. If he was this close you were already dead. Inuyasha fully expected bubbling poison to bite at his gut, or for his bones to be snapped, or his face ripped off, or…or…

At last Sesshomaru split off, a taut line of spit strung between their lips. Which was insane because how could this thing have goddamn spit but no punchable point on his body? Inuyasha rioted against the hold and snarled with flashing teeth.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?!”

There was no reply. He was still grasping his chin, still far too close, their noses brushing together and one puffing stream of breath hot between them. There was no air coming from the other man. His hands felt too smooth, Inuyasha realized with a start. Something like skin but not quite there yet.

False. It was a false form. Some sham, some specter sent by a witch or youkai or what have you, and it wasn’t fair to do this to him because Sesshomaru should be dicing him to bits. This thing was groping him like it was worship. Setting the insanity of that aside, Inuyasha wasn’t something to be touched. He was a damn pariah, and his real brother had spent his whole life reminding him of how disgusting and worthless he truly was.

Which was why he was all but spitting venom now. “Look, I know Sesshomaru, and he would sooner put his hand through my gut than his _tongue_ in my _fucking mouth!_ ”

To its credit, that gave the apparition some pause. It stared into his eyes with unsettling intensity.

“Yeah,” Inuyasha seethed, “and he doesn’t glow either.” Didn’t glow, had a body, was five hundred years in the past where he belonged. The list could go on, but there was also a further insult to address. “And just whose hand is that, jackass?”

Again, silence. It had this part of the impression down pat, but the lack of tangible answers was going to drive him crazy. Then the lips parted, and in that despicably noble baritone it answered him at last. “My own.”

Inuyasha’s nose wrinkled and Sesshomaru saw that as cause to nip the end of it.

“ _Uck!_ Cut that out! What the hell is wrong with you?”

He looked down on him through long, half obscured lashes. For a moment his eyes flashed gold, the lids striped with pale rose. The image faded and he was wan as ever. He traded the hold on his chin for the base of his thigh, just shy of his rear. Inuyasha swiped claws every which way but they crossed paths with nothing, and so he was lifted clear off his feet and pinned to the bedrock by phantom hips and hands.

The new vantage put him at eye level for once. Even just slightly above it. It cupped Inuyasha’s face now, thumb rubbing his cheekbones as if to inspect the flesh. Inuyasha snarled, but there was another flash of color. It was the markings this time. A hint of pallor to the flesh. Neither faded wholly but remained in slivers under the incessant glow.

“You’re just as I remember you.”

Inuyasha’s brows met in the middle. “Huh?” The apparition kept brushing his face. Memorizing every dip and curve and the lay of his lashes. Reverent, in a way he could never imagine Sesshomaru to be.

“Young again.”

The hand brushed down. The tips of treacherous claws traced a line across his neck and Inuyasha had to keep very still. It would be an easy line to draw. If the thing was borrowing Sesshomaru’s power, slitting his throat would take no more effort than a yawn.

“I’ve dreamt of many things.” The pad of his thumb carried on where his nails left off. Inuyasha swallowed thickly, the bobbing motion magnified under the deadly strokes. His nose twitched. There was more than rockslide debris and pine tickling at his nose now. A scent like storms, raw power woven through flesh.

He heard the apparition breathe before he felt the air tickle his wet lips. Faint, but real. Solidifying.

Inuyasha swallowed thickly. “Like…killing me?”

Either it didn’t hear him or it was choosing to ignore him. The thing seemed welded to his skin and yet a hundred worlds away at once.

“You were cut down.” It looked back to his eyes. “Or you lived forever.” It rested its forehead against his and a swoop of blood fled his head. He felt like someone had flung him spinning off Kirara’s back. “Which is the truth, Inuyasha?”

When had he started shaking? Was it when the electric scent sifted under his nose? Gold was settling into its eyes for good and Inuyasha only had mind enough to whisper, “I don’t know…”

It cradled his cheek like a lover might. The skin had the grooves and lines of living hands, and the light didn’t rake his eyes raw anymore. “I dreamed you woke only to die again.”

It kissed him. Inuyasha didn’t squirm. Didn’t batter against him, even if he could feel silk now, bunching under his fingers as he groped for a steadying hold. Something had gone ripping up his lungs in raw stripes and he had to hang on for dear life.

Sesshomaru would never do this, he reminded himself, a looping chant that should have banished the specter at once. He would never. He would never, he would never, he _wouldn’t_ …

“I’ve spent so long in dreams,” it murmured into him, each word sliding their lips together anew. “If this is another…let it stay a while.”

He threaded an arm around the small of his back and met his mouth deeply. Inuyasha could taste Sesshomaru in full, as real as the rocks he was wedged against. His scent enveloped them both in a thick fog. Reds bloomed in the floral pattern of his yukata, the long sweeps of his hair tickling them both as he made to drown in the pliant body he held dear.

* * *

He sat closer than was prudent and watched the sun drip down to the horizon. It held his attention rapt, except for when his frigid stare would drift to the side and linger on the sheen of dangling black hair.

Inuyasha was diminutive in death. The insects had been dispatched with poison and the pelts replaced, the mess of his gut too vulgar to bear. Now his hand had rolled loose of the covers, palm down and fingers curled in recoil. All earlier stiffness had been dispelled by Tenseiga, and so the corpse would shortly settle into a new position. Sesshomaru dropped his own hand down and splayed his fingers next to his brother’s. Both had slender fingers, but he surpassed him in both breadth and length. Another couple of decades may have helped. He wouldn’t have looked like a youth for much longer.

His lips were borrowed from his mother. Sesshomaru had a thin set mouth, a judgemental stroke etched in porcelain. Inuyasha had a pout, fuller on the top and bottom and flush with colour. His eyes were insolently upturned when open and childishly sweet when shut. With dark hair he looked too pale to be himself. It didn’t suit him, Sesshomaru decided, and looked back to the skies with a curled lip. It was even worse with only the splash of silver to hint at his true heritage. He looked like a stranger in his own body.

Jaken reliably came snooping for him as the sun sat halfway down in the earth. He had promised to return within the hour, after all.

“My Lord?”

He was rounding the corner, Ah-Un’s leash in his clammy grip. Though stating the obvious was his favorite pastime, he showed remarkable restraint once he happened upon the scene. He even hesitated to dart forward.

“It’s true then? The wolf wasn’t lying?”

“No, Jaken.”

Only then did he come to his ankles, both hands clamped to his staff as he bent in to look.

“Ah! So Inuyasha died in his mortal form? How disgraceful!”

Sesshomaru closed his eyes. He didn’t care to have his own thoughts narrated back to him. Jaken had a gift for souring the meaning.

“Well! No matter. Use Tenseiga! He ought to be taught a lesson for such reckless behaviour, the ungrateful boor!”

“Jaken.” The kappa quieted at once. He cuddled the staff closer. “Tenseiga cannot help him.”

“…My lord?”

Sesshomaru rose and looked to his dragon. It ambled forward, no command needed.

“My lord? Then…” The kappa was clearly torn. Eighty years ago this would have been a cause for celebration. Today it was more complicated. “Should we…make due course for his village?”

“No.”

“ _No?_ ” He hopped from foot to foot as Sesshomaru gathered the pelts around his brother. A small dose of poison melted the furs into each other, and would protect him until more suitable materials could be found. Inuyasha looked twice as young in such a bundle. Hardly a man at all. Sesshomaru pressed a thumb against his left eye. The lid there was still soft. It would make the task all the uglier. He had no desire to further desecrate Inuyasha’s body, but it must be done.

“He’s to be buried with our father. The only grave fit for the son of the Inu no Taisho.”

The sounds Jaken produced at that could burst the ears of lesser beings. “But he died as a mortal! And he was a hanyou besides! He should be left for his humans to deal with, this is nothing your lordship should sully his hands with!”

“There are none left, Jaken.” He draped his brother over Ah-Un’s back. The stiffness had yet to return. It likely would on the flight. He would have to ensure he remained in some measure of dignity. In better dressings. Hell would swallow them both if he were buried in filthy wolf furs.

“But there is still—”

“Either join me, or remain here. The wolves will no doubt return soon.”

He took to the air, and the kappa had to run and jump to catch hold of the saddle. It was no small feat when done while shrieking.

* * *

Inuyasha met the ground through a gentle dip, but he still gasped like he’d had the wind knocked from him. In a manner of speaking, he had. Sesshomaru was soft in his touch but his very presence was a blow that could not be rallied from.

Sleeping Wolf Mountain. He could laugh. Mrs. Higurashi had said all she knew of youkai were fairy tales. Silly stories like the curious shape of this shitty rock. Sesshomaru draped over him and loosened the tie of his hakama with one flick of a finger, and Inuyasha shivered below. It was no wolf that slept beneath the stones, but what a sleep it had been. He’d woken up with his brains scrambled. That’s why he was able to kiss Inuyasha’s neck as he split his haori open, or rub at the spaces between his ribs and palm the flat of his stomach.

Any other explanation was impossible. Sesshomaru would never touch him. Hell, Inuyasha would never _let_ him, but here he was, lifting his hips to help the man swish his hakama down. Now he lay half naked and shivering cold, aches in his muscles, his only comfort granted by the kisses Sesshomaru laid on chest. Inuyasha wanted to cover his face. Or rip free. Wriggle back into his clothes. Instead he lay panting and blinking back the threat of tears from his eyes.

It wasn’t like he’d mulled the idea over on a listless night. He’d have to be fucking bonkers. Both were men and both were brothers. He longed for Kikyo. Then he longed for Kagome.

Mrs. Higurashi’s voice floated through his mind with sweetly stupid questions. _Don’t you have anyone…_

No, he didn’t. He didn’t have anyone to stay alive for, not once Kagome completed the jewel and returned home for good. Not after Naraku was dead. Where would his life go? Sitting around watching his human friends shrivel like dried fruit, time picking them off like hens to slaughter? He would be burying them before he knew it. Every cut and bruise they gathered now was a seal on that pact. It would be old age, or it would be battle, or it would be illness.

Then what would be left to him? Shippo alone. Maybe Kirara. Shippo would grow and find his feet, make a family of his own. Kirara couldn’t speak, and at the end of the day her loyalty belonged to Sango.

Sesshomaru bit his collarbone and his back arched like a fresh strung bow. He sucked at the ensuing blood and the unearthly glow hanging at his edges dampened. A feverish swoon took over his skin and he had no will to fight when his brother switched from wound to mouth. His blood tasted bright between their lips. Inuyasha raised his knees against the cold and Sesshomaru seized the chance to tug the hakama off his ankles. His broad hand ran along the back of his thigh, a part of him never once touched.

He couldn’t take any more.

Inuyasha thrust both legs to the side, rolling loose, reassembling in a tight curl with his back to his brother and his face tucked tight against his knees. His untied haori was a shroud around him.

He could hear his brother shifting against the stone ground and his weight pressed against his back. He was surrounded: encircled by elegant arms and a pointed chin that sat between his ears. Without the spell of kisses and lusty touch the lack of warmth was obvious. Sesshomaru was too cold to be living yet. Most of his edges still glowed.

“Inuyasha.” A prompt, not a question. Inuyasha had to unwind a dozen knots in his chest before he could feel decent enough to answer.

“Don’t do shit you don’t mean.”

Or didn’t know the meaning of. How much of his brother stayed in tact through the years was uncertain. If he still slipped out of solidity in spots the same could be said for his mind. Dreams indeed.

A thoughtful hum vibrated against his back.

“Just as always, then.” It didn’t sound like a response to him. It was a musing of some other sort. He cinched his embrace in tighter and put his nose into the crown of his hair. He shouldn’t have to do that if all he wanted was to smell him. “It was foolish to hate you. Even more foolish to want you.”

To this day, Inuyasha could feel the ripping horror of claws in his eye on demand. He scowled into his knees. “You never did,” he muttered darkly.

“Mm.” Sesshomaru was quiet for a moment. “Could this be judgment? Have you returned to make me atone for the past?”

“I haven’t returned from shit. You’re the one that’s not supposed to be here.”

“Inuyasha.” A tone not to be brooked with. On a regular day Inuyasha would have no fucks to give about his brother’s whims. Now his head hurt and his body was bared, and the affections cut him up more cleanly than the poison whip would. He had never felt so small in his life.

“I spent many years despising you. This much is true.” Sesshomaru tilted him into his chest and Inuyasha flinched. He was inspecting him again from a whole new angle, staring down over his shoulder as Inuyasha played pillbug between his legs. He started with the arch of his cheekbone, just under where he’d dashed his eye to a bloody mess. “I’ve taken many things from you. This eye.” He brushed a thumb over the lid and Inuyasha held his breath with a shiver. He then covered both with a broad palm. “I blinded you once. And you discovered Kaze no Kizu.” He shifted again. Down the hand went to caress the curve of his belly. Inuyasha’s toes curled, another anxious tick he couldn’t keep hidden. “I carved you open and was sorry to not finish you off.”

Inuyasha planted his feet and waited. He refused to become a shivering wreck in his brother’s arms.

“There was a time where your death was all I sought. Then it simply…ceased to be.” Sesshomaru rubbed at his middle absently. The warm wind of his words puffed his hairs out of place. “When you left, I could only see the chances lost. You gave many things freely to those around you. You offered them to me once, and I refused.

“Now…” He turned his nose in deeper and stole the scent off him. “Now I’m damned to dream forever.”

Inuyasha had to stew in that for a moment. The words were sifted, turned, rolled around this way and that. The story fit well enough together, but when pasted into the life he knew it curdled and turned to spoil. “You said I left,” he remarked slowly. “Where did I go?”

Sesshomaru paused. He spoke with measured reluctance. “Into death.”

Inuyasha’s breath caught sharp in his throat. “How?”

Sesshomaru was silent. Refusing to answer. Inuyasha jutted out from the hold, twisting in his seat and snatching the wrists that made to catch him. “How?! You can’t say that shit and just shut up all of a sudden! Was it Naraku?”

“Naraku?” His brother had the audacity to look distantly bemused. He uttered the word like it was an acquaintance of years gone by, someone who’d once made him a bowl of soup on a cold day and whose name had been lost the next week. “No.”

“Then what? Tell me!”

It was near imperceptible, something that would be missed from a further distance and with less familiarity. All his expressions were no better than nuances, but Inuyasha knew every shade of his frigid glare. Sesshomaru was pissed.

“ _Grief._ ”

* * *

What should he have done differently?

The earth was unchanged. Impertinently so, it seemed to him. Three days since he was accosted by wolves and laid his brother to rest, and there was no great upheaval. Creatures big and small still pattered about and ate their fill, fought their petty squabbles and made their ruckus with little care.

Inuyasha had once scoured the country from coast to coast, in high mountains and deep valleys, landscapes carved anew by his battles and lives spared by his bleeding heart. Now the nation was silent. Whispers might start among the youkai soon. Humans were short of life and even shorter of memory, so he could expect nothing of them.

Sesshomaru alone was the thing come undone. Outward he was composed as ever, cold and calculating and all that he had ever amassed in reputation. But he could fly from coast to coast, he could slaughter foul creatures and rend humans into trembling fits, and still find himself hollowed come nightfall. Inuyasha, dirty and ragged and on the verge of tears, had become his meditation. Inuyasha with dark hair and eyes that begged to reclaim their silver and gold, smiling as he looked up to his hateful brother’s form.

He had smiled for him.

What should he have done?

Sometimes the answer was clear. Pursuit was the simplest answer. He should have followed after him, realized that in his addled state he was vulnerable. If nothing else, he could have slapped more sense into him so he might divulge his woes on the spot.

And what thereafter? Console him? Tell him there’ll be more soft-hearted humans to adopt? He’d always had a knack for inspiring their sympathy. He could have taken refuge in the new generations of youkai taijiya, descendants of his old friends. They must have love in their hearts for the half-breed, as the two fools who begot them adored his brother like one of their own. Or perhaps he could join the wolf-pack. It seemed their bad blood had quelled. Koga had been rattled by his finding and was overjoyed to carry out justice.

Sesshomaru loathed both prospects utterly.

A third came to him in a dream.

He slept so little that even fleeting fantasies alarmed him. His mind was a silent place in slumber, but when he laid down in a forest on the third night he found himself whisked back to his waking nightmare: Inuyasha standing in front of him. It was the same pleas. The same claws in his robes. The glistening eyes implored him, raked him raw from the inside out. _You told me to come find you._

In this dream, Sesshomaru did not knock him away. He let the hanyou climb into him. He allowed his ragged breath to dash against his lips. He watched that brimming fit rise at last, a tear streaking his ruddy cheek. He caught it with a kiss.

He both watched from afar and lived inside this effigy, perverting his memory with an embrace that never happened. A thrumming heartbeat caged in his arms, warmth and soft hair and boyish angles tugged against him, as alien to him in life as they were in death. A dire kiss pressed between them, like the sorts he would share with his priestess.

Sesshomaru had woke with a violent start.

 _Ridiculous_ , he thought at once. False. Unwanted.

His eyes swept the clearing. Ah-Un raised both heads to blink at him, but Jaken was sound asleep. Good.

Something moved to the left. His attention whipped to the side and his hand hovered over the hilt of his sword.

High in the trees and dark as ink, a shadow lurked. It hunched and sucked the light out of all it touched. The silhouette spoke of a boy, nearly a man, all loose sweeping sleeves and hair as long as his own. And atop his head…

Sesshomaru sat up straighter.

Then he blinked, and the illusion was gone.

At the break of dawn Sesshomaru was in a merciless state. He’d kicked Jaken awake and ordered him into action. He felt an urgent need to quit the forest. Something was sour in the air here, and he’d gotten no rest after the mad flight of fancy. Jaken was none the wiser about his lord’s foul mood, but Ah-Un watched him with grating intensity.

When they drew free of the woods all three stopped short. The open field had been razed. Earth upturned, and three long grooves marred the land in a devastating, claw-like stretch that spanned from the field's edge to the scorched dirt at the tips of their feet.

The scars of Kaze no Kizu.

* * *

It was both easier and harder to handle the bike than Kagome had thought. Easy, in that the actual mechanics were basically idiot-proof. She could switch gears, she could rev up and slow down, she could hit the breaks and put her feet down to steady herself.

The difficulty lay in the mountain path. It was mostly wide enough for commercial hiking but nature didn’t like to play by government regulations. It got frighteningly narrow at parts and some turns were sharper than she liked. If this were her regular bike she would be laughing, but the extra kick from the engine had her spooked. It wasn’t like the rope and post fence would stop a dirtbike. She slowed down when she got to the tricky parts and had to beat her screaming panic down by force of will. She needed to get to Inuyasha’s side pronto, but she’d never get there if she shot off the side of a cliff first.

Worse still, her headache was growing. What had looked like a speck or odd shadow hadn’t dispelled no matter how far she went or how many turns she took. It was a growing blur, flaring in colours like a prism off the one side. It swelled to fog out half of her field of vision in a matter of seconds. Kagome had never had a true migraine before, but she knew enough to recognize an aura. A blind spot invented by your brain, warning you of incoming agony.

And boy, did it ever agonize. Out of nowhere a rusty spike was driving into her temple and she had to rip to a stop, lift the helmet’s shield and shove her palms into her eyes. The right side of her face was tingling. Lower down her knees began to shake.

“This can’t be happening!” she growled into her hands. She slapped her cheeks and jammed the helmet down, hard enough to bruise her scalp. “Not _now!_ Not now!”

Around her neck, the jewel shards gleamed. Kagome looked down and pulled the necklace free from her pyjama collar. The shards were calling to her. Eyes wide, she wrapped her hand around the petite jar.

As silent as the aura and just as sudden, she saw the scene on the lodge porch play out again. Her mother and Inuyasha crouched down, facing towards her. At their backs a great beast of light floated on air with one paw on the wood. This time there was hair at the edges, white and shaggy and silken. As it lowered its head she saw red eyes. Long ears, long teeth, hissing drips of acid saliva. Exactly as she remembered it.

Remembered _him_.

Kagome let go of the shards and her head cleared at once. The jelly-spell had left her legs. Notions foul and fair alike zipped through her mind at a bullet train pace, too fast to catch and yet wholly understood.

Her voice was wafer thin in her own ears. “Oh my god.”

Back at the lodge, thirty-odd dozing and dazed invalids rolled in their cots. Mrs. Higurashi twisted towards the attendant dabbing sweat from her brow and muttered one word.

“ _Sesshomaru_ …”

The whisper echoed. One after another, each patient repeated the name until it became a buzzing chorus, like the chant of ghosts from behind castle walls.

The attendants balked. One turned to their supervisor.

“The paramedics are on their way?”

“Yes.”

He looked queasily down at his charge. “Should we ask for an exorcist too?”

* * *

“Is her memory enough to turn you away?”

Whatever answer he could give to that, it would be the wrong one. Nothing he had to say would be what Sesshomaru wanted to hear. So Inuyasha settled for the simplest. “Kagome’s not a memory to me.”

“No,” conceded his brother. “Clearly not.”

He rose. For the first time since this insane sojourn started the apparition wanted nothing to do with him. And all for what? The mention of Kagome’s name?

Inuyasha’s claws had left bitter grooves in the stone ground. He couldn’t even get the full story from him. Sesshomaru had doled out the details in drips. Kagome had died. Not in battle, but in some way devastating enough that Inuyasha saw fit to follow after. How and when were not disclosed.

“How am I…” He clenched his fist. Struck the ground and cracked ugly fissures beneath his knuckles. “Fuck you! How am I supposed to stop it if you won’t fucking _tell me_ how?”

“You cannot stop it.”

“Bullshit!” Inuyasha shot to his feet, half-nudity be damned. He wrestled the haori into a scant wrap for decency, fixed in place with a death grip as he darted to cut off his retreat. “I won’t allow it! I won’t let her die because you’re being such a—”

His brother arched a brow. “You mean to reverse time?” The question was cruel. A remark on his idiocy.

“Yeah! Maybe I can!” Sesshomaru stepped to the left and Inuyasha blocked him there too. A regular attack dog he was, eye hard on the target and too bullish to lay off. “Listen jackass, it’s already over for you but it hasn’t happened for me! I have all the time I want!”

“ _Enough_.”

“No!”

His face was snatched brutally. Any reverence Sesshomaru held for him had evaporated, the hold bruising on his jaw. “It’s enough. I say it’s enough. If you cannot grant me peace then cease haunting me at once. Go back to your priestess. Leave me be.”

“I’m not _haunting_ – just what do you think this is?! Where do you think you are?!”

Sesshomaru was brimming with rage. His grip tightened cruelly. “In _hell!_ ”

Inuyasha could take no more. He snatched the wrist, twisted his head, and chomped down on the meat between thumb and forefinger.

Sesshomaru hissed through his teeth. There was blood. Thin stuff. Colourless and gleaming, like how he’d appeared to start. The iron tang was negligible on his tongue.

Breathing furiously, growling low, Inuyasha pulled the hand out and spat to the side. He held fast to the wrist. “I’m right fucking here.” He jerked the it downwards and found the bite Sesshomaru had made to his collar. The wound was closing but he had sticky red stains as absolute proof. He dragged his brother’s fingers through the mess. “Dead people don’t bleed.”

Sesshomaru’s fingers flexed. They were leaving pink prints around the wound. His jaw had locked shut and he watched Inuyasha, boring into him like he meant to drill through his skull.

“By what right can you say such a thing?” He titled his head. His voice had taken an odd tone on. Strain. Emotion. “Tenseiga couldn’t raise you. You were dead for days.”

A sword that could save a hundred souls in one swing. Wasted on his half-breed brother.

“You cannot save that girl because you cannot spare her from time. Whenever I returned to your wretched village she had withered a little more. Her charms seeped from her and her back stooped, her childish mewl rasped into a crone’s croak, and you scarcely changed at all.”

Inuyasha curled his lip, furrowed his brow in the ugliest scowl he could manage, but the sickening image didn’t disperse. Kagome wisening. Becoming like her mother. Becoming older still, becoming weaker, becoming a prisoner in her own skin. Succumbing to something small and quiet. Gone.

It was five hundred years later. Or it was four hundred. Or it was no time at all. Needles pricked at his insides and he contorted his snarl to stave them off. Sesshomaru carried on.

“You asked me once if I counted the years. I never saw the need. Then you threw yourself away. You could have lived. You chose to die, and there was nothing left to do but count.

“Rin followed you. Ah-Un. Jaken.” Sesshomaru turned his head, fangs bared and never once relenting his horrible stare. “Forests were felled. The wolves turned dumb and the trees ceased to speak. Foul smelling mortals snaked through the brush from places unspeakable, polluting the land with new gods and devils. Despicable as it was, you could have survived this. You could have borne it all through.”

He, himself. Inuyasha neglecting to face the bleakness of dawn. This was a turn in the tale, small and easily missed. But as brash as he could be, he knew horseshit when he smelled it.

“I could have?” Inuyasha rasped darkly. “What about you?”

His hackles raised as the air turned acrid. Poison sizzled beneath Sesshomaru’s claws. The smell of it was paralyzing, a warning too thick to deny and yet Inuyasha ignored it all the same. It was plain to him now. The fury and the need, the centuries of sleep in a refuge mortals should not have been able to reach...

“You gave up.”

There was no challenge to it. That pissed him off. It gutted him. It was impossible, but it was the hand history had dealt. Inuyasha’s face twisted into an amalgamation of hideous things, desolation and rage and disbelief tumbling in a ceaseless fit. “You gave up. You just laid down and never woke up.”

Sesshomaru tried to wrest his hand away. Inuyasha jolted forward but stayed his course, feet planted in mulish refusal and tugging him back within reach. “You’re the most goddamn powerful shithead this side of the ocean and you let yourself just – you wasted away like a fucking castoff! Why? Because of _me?_ How is this my fucking fault?!”

It was just like him to clam up when he needed him to talk. Ever so damn unhelpful. He’d have better luck fighting a hurricane. He’d set fires with shards of ice and teach fish to fly before he’d get a useful answer out of his moronic, stubborn, unbelievably insane brother.

He was almost screaming. “What do you _want_ _from me,_ Sesshomaru?!”

With a hateful flash, the man shook in his grip and finally snapped. “Everything you gave to _her._ ”

Inuyasha gaped in open awe.

Kisses and peeled clothes weren’t the same thing. They both knew it. Worse still, they both knew the reply forthcoming.

“…I can’t give you that.”

Sesshomaru ripped away from him. Inuyasha stumbled. He rushed to clutch his haori closed and hold his churning belly at the same time. It was like Mousou’s poison attack all over again, seeing the limp line of his friends laid out to die. All had come a second too close. A moment away from that final breath. They would have if Sesshomaru had not intervened.

He clambered after him and snarled his fingers in the back of his robes.

“Leave me be, Inuyasha.”

“I won’t! Idiot!” he shouted. His arms snapped around Sesshomaru’s middle next. His brother had held him with surety and love. Inuyasha clung with life or death desperation. His cheek was mashed into his hair, his legs dragging in a precarious lean behind him. “You’re not allowed to give up! That’s stupid! You’re so fucking stupid! You can’t have it your way so you just quit everything? That’s not you at all!”

Sesshomaru had stopped trying to walk away. That must count for something. Even if it was only because Inuyasha was so acutely embarrassing himself. “And you? You cling to me even if you despise me? You cannot keep that which you don’t want. Let go.”

“I didn’t _want_ to despise you!”

Inuyasha could count the number of times he’d cried in his life on less than one hand. Funny how the tears dashed out now, striping his cheeks and burning in their hot flush. It was humiliating.

Even with his back to him the idea that Sesshomaru might see was unbearable. Inuyasha thrust his face deep into the pillow of hair. His nose was crushed against his spine. He was leaking out of his disgusting, shitty fucking eyes like an empty-headed girl, and he couldn’t stop because his insides were sliced and diced finer than fresh tuna on a platter. It hurt in his head and in his heart and in every twitch of his skin. “I never did. I didn’t. I wanted to…”

He remembered the first time he’d seen him. To a child’s eyes there had never been a more resplendent figure, no one cooler cut, no one so striking. And then that godly vision turned into something cruel.

“I wished you wanted me. My whole life.”

Fucking idiot. He was such an idiot to think it. So stupid to say it aloud for the first time, but it was the truth. He raked the silks with needy claws and bowed his head against his back. “I can’t give you what I give to her, because it’s not the same. You don’t get it. Kikyo is Kikyo. Kagome is Kagome. And you…you’re…”

He sagged in his own hold. Then he stood taller, reached up and latched over his chest and shoulders. Inuyasha had to stand on tip toe to bury his face in his brother’s neck.

There was a beat beneath his nose. Bump, and bump, soft and slow. His brother’s body had been silent until now. The glow dimmed a little more and so he could hear his heart. Inuyasha squashed a hiccup and pressed his mouth against the skin.

Sesshomaru was rigid from head to toe. And then he was not.

He turned to him fluidly like the ghost he’d first seemed to be. Inuyasha twisted away and threw up an arm to hide the garish leaks. “Get off of me!” he snapped. It was no use. His face was captured in a two-handed hold, like something delicate to be examined. And maybe it was, because if he didn’t look like a busted up brat with his face bloomed pink and sniffling back more tears, he’d eat Tessaiga. Sesshomaru was not dissuaded by the hideous display. He should have been. Instead he kissed the wet patches, twice on the right and once on the left, and then took him by the mouth. Inuyasha kissed back. Bent under the push, relented when a hand found the small of his back and held him aloft through the deep dip downwards. This time he felt gooseflesh rise. This time he felt a twinge in his cock.

His guts were still rent in a fucking mess, and when Sesshomaru pulled off of him his own regal features were marred by mourning. Inuyasha yanked himself up to kiss him again, just to forget that face. This wouldn’t fix anything. It was only a delay.

They spilled to the ground for the last time. Inuyasha fussed with the ties of that fine yukata and Sesshomaru wrestled the haori off for good. He twisted his hands in his rosary beads and yanked him up to claim a soul-sucking kiss. It was like he wanted to rebrand them, put a new spell of subjugation on him that demanded spit and tongue and teeth. There was already an excess of it. Inuyasha had to thrash free for air and Sesshomaru took the chance to toss the last of their clothes away. He pulled his legs apart and Inuyasha twined them around his waist. There was nowhere else for them to go.

It was too fast. He was petrified, no bones about it, but the rhythm had him hypnotized. If they stalled the spell would break and he would lose all courage. He’d remember life and love outside of this miserable grave Sesshomaru carved for himself and they would lose one another for good. So Inuyasha ran his hands over his brother’s chest. Cupped the muscle in his palms, raked the blunt tips of his claws over faultless skin. Took his lips as they came for him, writhed under him, squeezed his legs tighter when he felt a stiffness brush against his groin. Sesshomaru dropped his hips and pushed their members against each other, and a jolt as bold as lightning ran him through. Each move was languid even as Sesshomaru kissed his mouth into ripe berry reds. He bit onto his neck and shoved down hard enough to hurt. Inuyasha gasped and met him with a roll in kind. He’d gone stiff in no time at all.

Sesshomaru drew back a fraction, done with the tattoo of angry welts he’d left on the cords of his neck. He pinched Inuyasha’s bottom lip between two fingers, rolling back the wet underside. Then he drove them into his mouth.

Inuyasha questioned nothing. He’d have to run if he did. He pulled on them with his tongue, suckling them sopping wet as he undulated against the pressure from above. There was an afterthought of poison biting the back of his mouth, but nothing remained to hurt him. Just a sour tingle like burning spice. His hands clapped around the base of that pale palm and he lifted his head to better work his mouth over it. Sesshomaru brushed his hair away. He pressed the soft flesh of his ear flat and stroked the fur down. A flush was rising in those high arched cheeks, faint as the rest of him but plain to see.

“Let go,” he murmured huskily, and Inuyasha released his hand and dropped to the stone floor. He panted as if he’d been swinging swords until his arms numbed. Instead he had been rendered dumb and breathless under the weight his older brother.

Sesshomaru drew back with his freshly sodden fingers. He peeled the left leg free with his dry hand and bullied it down until the knee was wedged against Inuyasha’s own chest. With the pair split from the hips up Inuyasha got his first real glimpse of his bared arousal. It was long and livid and wanting. It cocked arrogantly upright in a thatch of silver hair, just like his own, and yet the thing was as alien to him as the food he’d guzzled hours ago. He’d never seen another man hard before.

He had never been touched below the waist, either. Sesshomaru had turned his palm up and teased between his cheeks, one wet claw worrying the taut niche therein. Inuyasha gasped and arched away and Sesshomaru had to give chase. He quelled him with his body, hand wound in his hair and pinned his leg with his own impossible weight. His wet hand was still at his rear.

“Be still.”

“It’s gonna rip something.”

“It won’t.”

Inuyasha swallowed a formless lump, but nodded. The touch returned and he braced himself in the unshakeable planks of his shoulders. Sesshomaru kept tugging his hair so he wouldn’t look down and get spooked, their noses a hair’s width apart. The very tip wedged in. Cautious. All he did was watch, no affections laid though their skin was close enough to taste. He focused solely on easing his way inside while Inuyasha fought for calm.

Wet or not, the intrusion was jarring. Once the first breadth of knuckle went in the rest followed suit with less fuss. Sesshomaru crooked his finger just so on the drag back. His loose leg jittered. It refixed its position, toes curled in as his breath lay suspended in his lungs. It was a dangerous play, but Sesshomaru countered the risk with ponderous push and pull. He rubbed the pad of his finger back and forth within him. Searching something out. It nearly pulled loose but that was only to worm in the second spit slicked finger, twice as gentle as the first.

Not so for long. He couldn’t mimic the rough thrust of cock with claws like his (and Inuyasha knew he wanted to, for now he was eating him whole at the mouth and rolling his hips in mounting fervor) so instead he rubbed the tender walls, splayed his fingers wide and drew them out slow. It was painful at the entrance but dulling the longer it went on, and Inuyasha had his hands full with the teeth grazing his lips.

Either he’d done enough or he refused to wait any longer, it was unclear, but the fingers had vanished below. Sesshomaru brought his palm to his own mouth and licked it sodden, gaze never leaving Inuyasha’s. He spat into his hand and somehow it was the most vulgar thing Inuyasha had ever seen. Was that why his breath was hitching, or his cock turned insufferably hot trapped between them?

Sesshomaru hurriedly painted his cock with this spit. He bore down at once. Inuyasha was trapped in a suffocating hold that bent his spine into a hook, legs sprouting out of Sesshomaru’s ribs.

It was shatteringly thick within him. It wasn’t finished. With each passing gasp that rasped from his throat another sliver sunk in. A steady descent. Pushing the flesh apart to make way. Inuyasha had lived long enough to see the things people did in the so-called privacy of nature. He’d endured talks with Miroku that filled in enough blanks to put him off intimacy for good. He knew what men did with one another, had registered the intent in a blur as he sucked on Sesshomaru’s fingers, but the fever that carried him through had broken now. He was without air, he was folded in half, he was speared. He wasn’t sure why he had given in except that he needed to do something to keep him from leaving.

Sesshomaru’s face was buried in his neck. Inuyasha was left to watch the heavens, encased in his body and swooping hair. His claws gouged into those indominable shoulders. Sesshomaru blew heavy breath against him and rolled in deeper, coaxing his spine to bend a little sharper, his insides to ease up. He couldn’t make it to the hilt. He’d crack him in two. A testing flick of his hips had Inuyasha bumping higher beneath him, but no further progress was made.

Was it ordinary to feel lonely like this? He had a body nestled inside him, on top of him, he had the taste of him in his mouth, and Inuyasha felt closer to the stars than he did to Sesshomaru. His own skin was a rubbery beast that had never been part of him at all. His mind floated high and far.

Maybe it was because this was hopeless. He’d return to his era in three days or less and Sesshomaru would hate him, and then he’d curl up and die on this mountain in the centuries between no matter what Inuyasha did. He was giving himself away to lost causes.

He thought of Kagome, hopping between her time and his and being the definition of goddamn impossible, being intoxicating. He thought of her breasts in the cage of her lace and wire underthings, the flash of her thigh, the dip between her legs only seen when the wind teased her skirt. He thought of her beaming bright eyes and flushed lips. How his skin had prickled when her fingers brushed his neck, swooping through his hair as she worked out the knots and left it shining and tied high.

He thought of Sesshomaru raising Tokijin to cut him down. He thought of the arms that he stole to hold Tessaiga, dragon and human and more. Inuyasha ran a hand down that regrown stump, the true arm now realized in flesh anew, entwined around him while the coveted sword was cast aside. Sesshomaru rocked into him and he flinched, sweet heat courting pain. He turned his head and found his lips near a pointed ear. Wholly youkai, full blood. Inuyasha took the tip between his lips, then his teeth. He bit lightly and Sesshomaru growled.

As if summoned he raised his head and licked between his lips. They moved in luxurious spoils, taking time neither had to press hard and last long. Inuyasha grabbed at the soft sheet of hair and pulled Sesshomaru out of the kiss. He looked up into his eyes as he rocked under him, bobbing with each thrust. His eyes were always arresting: he was the only creature living who could chill gold as cold as silver. They slanted serenely below fine and faint brows, which were nearly straight across and pristinely shaped. It must be his turn to seize the rare chance for study. He traced the stripes that carved the hollows of his cheeks, brushed his thumb over the waifish hairs of his brow, swept the bangs from his face. Inuyasha might not be swayed by the male form but he wasn’t completely clueless. If Sesshomaru didn’t exude such a murderous aura he would turn heads for seedier reasons. He was mythic, something to be preserved in paintings and song. Yet this ethereal lord leaned his cheek into Inuyasha’s palm, just as starved for touch as the reviled creature below him.

How pathetic that this was their common ground.

His legs were twitching. There was a skittish electricity dancing across the skin of them. He’d pulled his cock in solitude before and knew those sensations back to front. Now he had too much shock to contend with. The slip of thickness within was nursing a hidden piece of him to life. Each squeeze lit it like the brush of a match, again and again, the flame bursting brighter on each strike. Gritted teeth could only guard so much, and in spite of himself Inuyasha was making delicate sounds. They were inhuman in his throat, girlish gasps on bated breath, a new one born with each thrust and bounce. Sesshomaru chased the sound down his throat but they didn’t stop, moans reverberating within the kiss.

He could feel the press of hips flat against his ass and wondered when they had made it all the way to the hilt. He’d missed it somehow, gone dizzy on dazzling tingles. His own cock was a throbbing mess. When he went to stroke it Sesshomaru batted his hand out of the way and hoarded the task for himself. His hand was always broad but blinded from sight it felt gigantic. The strokes were greedy. Quicker than the punch of his thrust but that was catching up. By now there was no fight left in him. Inuyasha bore through the battering and rollicked in the rub, unable to control what the rest of him was doing. Holding on tight, mostly, a precipitous starvation for the muscle and bone that weighed him down. He had to map it out with his hands and legs before it vanished, because he surely had to be dreaming. Inuyasha was burning alive. He was evaporating into light. He was writhing, Sesshomaru was driving into him without a shred of restraint. The saintly reverence was gone and in its place was bullish cruelty. Decimation. Ownership of every last stretch of his skin.

Inuyasha lost it. One massive hitch of breath and he was shooting cum between their bellies, all over Sesshomaru’s hand. He cried out in a broken crackle before biting into the meat of his own palm. He had to stifle the ugly sounds, but the quakes were still coming. It was as if the press inside had plunged the stickiness out of his cock and hijacked the rest of his limbs for the ride. His feet kicked high and his hips flicked up, his free hand raked a bloody stripe down Sesshomaru’s spine. The iron tang of it muddied the rutting air.

Sesshomaru paused for a moment to watch. He was panting through a scant part in his lips, cheeks pale pink and eyes gleaming. He kept worrying the cock until the last drop had burbled from the tip. He made no move to clean it. Instead he ran the mess down the underside of Inuyasha’s thigh, a sticky path freezing under the chill of night. He groped his rear, hard and kneading, then clapped onto his hip and carried on.

The pace ramped and resumed and Inuyasha had no dignity left to fight for. He whimpered and squirmed and gasped under the crash of cock within. He could still feel that treacherous spot humming to him. It was hot and spent and swapping the last threads of life within him for shocks that could numb his soul. He coiled around Sesshomaru like a lost child. He needed it to stop and dreaded when it would. What started as an invasion now made him feel whole. Loneliness banished. In its place was a needy, useless wretch that might wither without stronger hands to hold it.

Sesshomaru could have done anything he wanted to him then. It was good luck that his only desire was to keep their skin on the verge of rubbing raw. His arm had snaked beneath him somehow, maybe on a good thrust where Inuyasha’s back curled high and his mind sailed away. His teeth fixed into his neck over the welts he’d laid down prior. He worked one leg to a wider angle and crushed down, savage. Final. With a guttural groan he pressed in raw to the base and ground his last strokes out to a dying rhythm. His chest heaved hard against Inuyasha. His teeth had gouged a squad of holes, red leaking from under his lips. He lapped away what he could of the wound and gradually began to still.

They lay together, breathing as one. Inuyasha watched the heavens and Sesshomaru minded his bite. Higher thought tiptoed around the pair, pressing a squeamish foot in after enough empty seconds slipped past.

Now that he could remember words again, he had just enough to name the weary press inside his head: headache. He could hear Kagome shaking her little jar of pills, take two now and two after lunch, and you should be right as rain.

His middle rumpled into itself. _Kagome_ …

His lip trembled. He bit it into stillness. His heart hurt fiercely and a weariness like sleeping poison was pulling the muscles loose from his bones. Inuyasha took a breath and patted the back of Sesshomaru’s head. “Oi. You awake?”

There was a tepid growl vibrating between their chests. “Don’t be foolish.”

The Lord of the West drew up, risen on flat palms to either side of Inuyasha’s head. They separated with a sticky squelch below when Inuyasha unlocked his legs and dropped them back to the earth. He flinched and wedged them together as if it might stem the flow, but he could feel the seed drip out of him. It was musky on the air and cloying on his battered rim.

The brothers regarded one another. Both had turned a stranger in their dishevelment, their nakedness. Neither broke the peace. Sesshomaru flinched suddenly and looked off to the side. He frowned at something far away down the side of the mountain.

“So many lights. I smell no smoke.”

“That’s ekleck…” Inuyasha halted. He wet his lips and tried again. “Eleckletricity. Or some shit. Lights without fire.”

“Hn.” Sesshomaru continued to glower downward. The settlements were something new, glitter encasing a valley that once was pure wild.

Inuyasha had a hundred thoughts to voice. Even more concerns. Some expletives. All were muffled by a sickening blanket named Kagome, and stabbing through that was the knifish Sesshomaru. He couldn’t sort the threads properly. There was a pounding pain smack in the middle of his forehead and all he wanted to do was sleep.

“You look more solid than before.”

Sesshomaru blinked down at him. It was true. His skin looked like skin, his scent was pure and crackling with power. Only a fuzzy halo remained and it dissipated wherever he directed his stare, cottoning to the peripheries like a phantom.

“You look pale,” was the odd counter. Sesshomaru pressed a hand to Inuyasha’s forehead. “Did I injure you?”

Sort of. Inuyasha didn’t want to move his legs just yet. Or think too deeply. He was afraid of what he might recover. “You wish.”

“Fool.”

The lordly youkai sat off to his side and dragged their clothes back over. He wrapped Inuyasha in his haori first before slipping his arms through his yukata. He pulled Inuyasha until his head rested atop his lap and considered him with a furrowed brow. “You _are_ younger. You were taller last I recall.”

Inuyasha put on a sneer, but his eyes were heavy laden and blinking slow. “Fuck you. I’m tall enough.”

Sesshomaru didn’t rise to the bait. He chased the grain of fur on his ears, rubbing them in absent afterthought. The touch was a salve but it did nothing to alleviate the pounding in his skull. “What now then? Am I absolved? Inuyasha?”

“Are you what?” Damn, it was difficult to keep a line of thought. He let his eyelids droop just to focus.

“Or is this reality at last?” He drew dainty circles on his temples with his claws. “Your blood is sharp on the air where it was dull before. But it cannot be…”

Inuyasha sighed. “Who fucking knows?”

The gentle teasing stopped. He could feel the pointed stare through his shuttered lids, but had no power to meet it. “Inuyasha?”

He had no answer for him.

The earth took up the challenge.

A ripping noise cut the pause, small but burgeoning quick and constant as the hum of bees. Quite like it in fact, but with heavier weight and forced stops and starts. A lot like something freshly familiar, a concept dancing at the back of his head. Sesshomaru bent over him at first. Protective, assessing, but then he shifted Inuyasha’s body to the ground. He was reaching for the rest of his clothes. Silk whispered behind him and the motor ran from afar.

Motor. Bike. Modern words he knew.

Inuyasha’s eyes shot open.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one more after this! There is if not a happy ending then a peaceable one, more or less. I promise it's not all devastation... 
> 
> Thank you again for reading everyone! I hope you're doing well and keeping occupied. I'm praying for the end of quarantine to come soon, even a net dweeb like me needs a sprinkling of sun.

Sesshomaru had taken up a new pastime.

Stories of the warrior hanyou’s death might be lacking, but dreadful tales spread among mortal thieves of an aristocratic spirit in white that slaughtered cutthroats in droves. The bodies could be found on footpaths, callously left where they fell. Rotting warnings for their kin.

It gave him pleasure, but no respite. Human blood was no salve for the plague that rotted his mind.

The dream mutated like an unwatched pot left to boil. It began with the hold, then moved to kisses, then skirted into unspeakable motions. Passions he’d never let rise. Unbecoming things best saved for a partner he had yet to meet. Sometimes he let himself believe that it was simply that: he withheld his own carnality too long and his mind was scraping up fodder in the lurch. It would be nice if he could sustain such a fallacy.

Impossible, when his mind wandered similarly to their other encounters. Such as Inuyasha’s release from the tree, amassing an ever-growing pack of humans and weakling youkai while he swung his sword at Sesshomaru, their blades meeting in arcs of light. He had a madman’s fury in his eyes, then. Within the scope of dreams and daytime dalliances he ventured other possibilities. If he had welcomed him upon waking perhaps that fury would have softened. Maybe the humans would not have been needed. Or longer still before, with Inuyasha scrawnier, less sure footed, less hardened by failure after failure, when his cheeks were full and his voice childish and high. Once he had been ready to follow Sesshomaru. Once he had believed in brotherhood. It would have been easiest then, rectifying this error. Perhaps if they grown together as brothers he wouldn’t be seiged by such putrid thoughts now.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. None of these musings amounted to answers or peace of mind. They sapped the vitality from him in trickles like the slow pump of poison.

He slept very little these days. A tradition was taking hold. If he dreamed and they lost their clothes, he would wake abruptly and without a shred of rest. Rather than risk returning to madness, he would brood and wait out the sun, eyes roving for the first sign of odd shadows.

He would start with the leaves of the canopy. Then he would inspect the rocks, and knolls across daunting fields. Even the base of waters had to be watched, for once he’d looked into a pool and thought he saw a second face in the depths. His fury rose with each half-glimpse. There were many. Partial signs were foul tricks and left him doubting his mind even worse than slumber had. In the last two weeks his reborn arm was stricken numb three times. He was fearful that he’d see the ravages of Kaze no Kizu again – he wasn’t fool enough to blame the first time on some other phenomenon.

He thought once or twice to send Jaken on consult. Surely there were monks or sagely youkai who could banish these sensations. However that would entail trusting Jaken with such nonsense, and he expected it would sully their understanding beyond reproach. These were ailments he would bring to no one, even if the kappa was beginning to suspect something. Sesshomaru’s temper was shorter than ever and he rested poorly if at all. 

On the next full moon he withheld from sleep altogether. Sesshomaru despised the idea of tempting fate and instead was giving grave consideration to abandoning Jaken. Just long enough to pursue a cure in privacy. The kappa had fallen into unshakeable slumber hours ago, as had Ah-Un. Slipping away would be child’s play. Or better yet, set him on some fool’s errand so he did not question his position. He would be loathe to have his party dwindle to nothing but himself and a silent beast, no matter how steadfast the dragon proved.

Perhaps it was his foolhardy notions that invited more madness. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep. One moment he had only his thoughts for company, watching his vassel and steed and envying their peace of mind. Then he turned to look away and the view was blocked.

Standing over his legs, chin held high and wide eyes rolled down to accuse him in bonfire gold, was Inuyasha. He was white-haired again, but though moonlight came speckled through the patchy canopies above not one strand shone in full silver. None of him caught shadow, nor light. He had no feet. His legs faded into nothingness, and a pair of green flames danced at his side. The mark of a yurei. A restless spirit, painted in flat blocks of color on the drenched silk of night.

Inuyasha said nothing. His mouth was an ungracious line. Sesshomaru sat up straighter. His lungs must have crumpled within him, for he could draw no air.

The two stared at one another, each frozen in time.

“…What more do you want, Inuyasha?”

What more, indeed?

Sesshomaru soaked in the sight of his fallen brother’s face. The flat lack of depth and shadow couldn’t marr the features he’d traced in dreams. They were realer than his memories, more beautiful than he recalled even in their implacable fix. In another month would he have forgotten the curve of his brow? The bow of his lips?

He dared not stand, not when the figure was poised atop his legs and moving might dash it into nothingness. Sesshomaru would not accept it. He needed answers.

“I’ve laid you to rest. I’ve done my duty.”

Not a hair on his head shifted. Not even a twitch of his eyes. 

“I tried to raise you from death.”

It didn’t take. Why hadn’t he realized the futility of it? Why had it taken him so long to find the body? The wolves beat him to it. He was left to rot, left for the maggots and beetles to desecrate and dash his chances to pieces. Tenseiga had been useless. The whole affair was useless. A waste. Wasted life, wasted time, wasted youth. Inuyasha was young enough to live long. Live near forever if he wanted.

“You raced to your own demise. Why didn’t you return to me?”

Inuyasha’s chin raised and his glare turned haughtier still. It was boiling. Not with hate nor fury, but a lower anger. An accusation, but of what?

Sesshomaru had turned him away. _What should he have done? What could have been done?_

“You failed to press your case. You gave up too quickly. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

If he had returned…

Sesshomaru was reaching upwards. He could take his hand if he so chose. He could cup his waist. He could hold him in place for as long as he pleased. Inuyasha hadn’t been so beautiful in life. He would have remembered it. The sight of him was hypnotically searing, like hot iron being molded into blades. 

“Did you long so badly to be at my side?”

The ghost gave answer at last when he raised both his pallid hands. He hooked his thumbs under the bead and bone rosary strung around his neck. The spell of subjugation. The thing had snapped when Koga retrieved it from bandits, but the priestess herself had never removed it.

In one violent jerk, he pulled it level with his chin. It glinted with a shocking sheen, as if polished steel encased the crude carved wood. Then the thing blasted holy light in a flare fit to blind, and Sesshomaru had to raise his arm to block it out.

When he lowered it the apparition was gone. The clearing was cold and swaddled in shadows, and Sesshomaru was the only waking creature in sight.

The grass was littered with wooden beads and ivory teeth. He plucked a black bead from the ground. He could smell fire rat fur on the aging wood. Sweat and flesh. All faint, all fading. He closed his hand around it and locked his jaw tight as he brought it to his nose. He leaned back into the tree and sucked in the scent, eyes closed. Sesshomaru stayed frozen that way until dawn reached for him with white beams through rustling leaves.

* * *

As promised, the trail ended in a generous bulb presiding over the plateau, far above any tumbling rocks. There was a lookout enclosed with rope, primed for tourist photo ops and rubbernecking at what was probably once a natural wonder.

Not so natural after all.

Kagome had roared up the final stretch with half her guts wedged in her windpipe. The trees were thick and sometimes the trail wound between stretches of shrubs and pine instead of hugging the cliff’s edge. The greenery didn’t shut out the figures in white, still visible through the trunks as she zipped past. Bright specks in the navy night, growing bigger and bigger.

When she burst onto the finish line she nearly let the bike fly out from between her legs. The heels of her sneakers wedged in to kick up fine ground dirt as she braked for her life. The front wheel came within kissing distance of a square wooden post but took mercy at the last second, halting just shy. Kagome lurched off the seat and ambled on shaky legs to the triple-roped fence.

Inuyasha was on the ground, back bowed and on his knees with his hands at his middle, looking her way with a fraught expression obscured by distance. _Alive_ , her mind supplied. Standing tall in front of him, however, was no incorporeal spirit. It was dimming down to near normality. The shards hung around her neck pulsed.

“Inuyasha!” she hollered, and at once she was clambering over the rope, crow bar in hand and moving at triple speed. She was absently grateful that the pyjamas she’d worn were a shorts and tee pair, otherwise she’d be giving them quite a show with the can-can kicks she needed to clear the fence. Though frankly speaking, by now Inuyasha had been unwittingly introduced to her whole underwear drawer. Still, there was no need to bring Sesshomaru into that fold.

Which brought her to the most baffling part of this mess: why him? Why here and now? The vision brought on by the jewel gave her ideas and the fact that he was still sort of glowing only cemented them, but her inner thoughts were mostly marred with shrieks and adrenaline-pounding alarm.

There were worse interlopers that might visit from the past, but not many that matched him for power. And her without her bow and arrows. Damn, damn, damn!

She skidded down the embankment with a daredevil’s abandon, raking her leg as she fumbled only to push off again. It was steep and it was far, she could seriously hurt herself if she fell.

A blur zipped her way and Sesshomaru was suddenly _there_. In her face. Snatching her arm.

“ _Kagome!_ ”

Inuyasha sounded ragged down below. Why hadn’t he come for her instead?

Just as quick and twice as rudely, she was zipped off the cliff and dumped onto the stone plateau. Her legs clattered like a new born foal’s and she almost fell right on her butt, but Sesshomaru righted her by the arm. He was as solid and hot as any living thing. A bad sign. Really really bad. The stabbing pain was in her temple this time and she had to grab the shards to allay it.

Sesshomaru sliced through the helmet’s buckle and tossed the thing off her head. He snatched at her hair next, turning her face towards his. Two arms? She balked. Had he taken one of Inuyasha’s?

“Don’t hurt her! Sesshomaru!”

He ignored Inuyasha (still on the ground, both arms thankfully attached but sounding less than himself, she could hear him panting with effort and see him shake under his own weight) and studied her, frosty glare belying something more than disgust for once.

“Impossible…” he whispered.

“What’s impossible?” She gave a mighty wrench and of course got nowhere. He had seized her crow bar arm so she had to let go of the shards to slap at the grip. At once the headache snake back in, achy and soft and spreading slow. “Let go of me, you big jerk!”

“You’re mortal.”

“So what?!”

“Let her _go!_ ”

He did. Shockingly. Kagome tripped back a few steps before righting herself. Ridiculous as it was, she thrust the crow bar at him like it was a venerated youkai blade. His frown only intensified. “Stay back!” she ordered, and dashed to Inuyasha’s side. He all but collapsed when she got there.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Inuyasha hissed. She scowled back.

“Is that the thanks you’re giving me? I’m here to save you!”

“Kagome, you can’t—”

“Here,” She began looping his arm around her shoulders and almost dropped him in fright. There was no fight in him at all. He was weak as a kitten. Not a drop of blood on him but he was close to fainting, just like Mama had been.

Then he turned his head and it seemed he was not so unscathed after all.

Her eyes dropped to his neck. Her fingers pressed to it while his lips trembled, throat bobbing as he swallowed guilty knots. There was blood here, hot on her fingers. Tooth marks. Purpling bruises all bloomed in a line, just not the kind that came from throttling hands. They locked eyes and it occurred to her that his lips looked bitten too. One side of his hakama tie was far longer than the other.

Kagome held that stare for the longest singular second of her life.

Footsteps from soft soled boots drew her from the spell. That chilling murmur was poison on her ears.

“You’re supposed to be dead.”

She had no comeback for that.

Kagome twisted and looked upon the Lord of the West with owlish awe. The facts weren’t fitting. It was only the two of them here, and it wasn’t a landscape scarred by battle. Tessaiga was inert and cast off mere meters away. Its sheathe was closer but similarly discarded. There wasn’t a mark on the youkai lord or a frayed thread on his garb, and all his blades were snugly strung at his side.

She spoke slowly. “…What do you mean? I’m supposed to be dead?”

Inuyasha grabbed for her hand. He squeezed it, though the gesture was sapped of any real heft. Just like her mother. “He doesn’t know…” Kagome looked to him again, eyes darting between his for answers. “He doesn’t know where we are…”

Another piece slotted in the puzzle. She felt her heart hammer harder than ever.

Sesshomaru glowered down at the pair. “And where is that, Inuyasha?"

Whether it was shame that cowed him or whatever affliction had taken hold was difficult to say. Inuyasha could only cling to Kagome’s sleeve, his head drooping to her knees. “Damn, I feel like shit.”

She rolled him into herself and she could have sworn the youkai stiffened. With trembling hands she arranged him face up on her lap, pointedly avoiding the bite and the seeping blood. “You’re going to be okay,” she said distantly.

“Priestess.”

Kagome winced. It was like his voice alone wedged the nail deeper in her skull. She grabbed for the shards and gave a mighty huff. Invigorated once more.

“I’m not dead _yet_ , Sesshomaru.” She cast him a glare of her own. “This place is my time. My home. You’re the one who’s dead.”

* * *

It was four hours after daybreak when the fiery flare in the sky heralded the end of his haunting. This time it wasn’t another visitation. At least not from the afterlife.

It began to descend. A speck hurled off, plummeting, assuming the shape of limbs and body before popping into a gaudy pink ball. This garish offense descended with more control but no less urgency.

Once it was close enough to catch the treetops it popped, reassuming its true form once more.

“Sesshomaru, you _jerk!_ ”

He could only blink wearily as the kitsune plopped to the earth in front of him. Though once he’d been half the size of Jaken, Shippo now stood twice as tall. You could no longer quite call him a child. The fat was thinning from his cheeks and his limbs had gone rebellious and knobby with adolescence. His tail now fell long behind him, and though it was still tied high his auburn hair dusted his shoulders.

What hadn’t changed was his impudence.

Jaken was at once on guard between his master and the offending brat. “How dare you insult Lord Sesshomaru in such a manner! Apologize at once!”

“Like hell I will!” He marched forward, reddening venomously in the cheeks. “I know what you did!”

“And what is that?” Sesshomaru muttered.

“You _took him away!_ ” Shippo stamped his foot. “Koga said he left him with you, and when they came back you were gone! We’ve been trying to find you for _ages!”_

He raised one brow. He knew he would be accosted eventually. It was no less trying on his nerves. “Is that all? If you’ve come to accuse me of wrongdoing, find a more interesting excuse.” He turned on his heel. “Come Jaken.”

With a pop the kitsune materialized to his front. Just close enough to strike.

“ _HE’S NOT YOURS TO KEEP!_ ”

The little creature was shaking all over now. Fear laid low in his scent, but his rage was stronger. His grief. His fangs were bared, puny fists trembling but aligned for attack. “You don’t get to just – just _show up_ out of nowhere and take him away! You don’t! You can’t do that! You don’t get to decide anything, you hated him!”

Sesshomaru would not give him the satisfaction of a twitch. Not so much as a glare. He would not harm one of Inuyasha’s own. It would be disgraceful to strike him. It would scarcely be a fight. But heavens above, the fox was surely testing him.

“Hate.” The word was foul on his tongue. True for most of his life. He would look on the half-breed’s face and be encumbered with disgust. Roiling fury at his father for begetting such a vile creature. Untenable impatience with the half-breed’s stupidity, stunning shame at his weakness. It would have been nobler to kill him at birth.

Those were his own thoughts, but all of them over half a century old. There had been warmth enough to melt the frost between them, and whatever irritations he’d had with the half-breed had turned anemic. Even before his death. And after? Reliving each of those spurns and cruel words and feeling the sting of them as if he hadn’t spat them out himself?

To be chided for those errors now by a spindly-limbed child with no more sense than an ant infuriated him. “Do not presume to know anything beyond the limits of your feeble head. I have given him an honorable grave. Return home and pay your respects in private. I’ll have no more of your squawking.”

Shippo looked fit to murder. He growled and contorted his sneer as viciously as he could manage, which was not very. Before he could get his next barb in a new scent swished by on the breeze. Sesshomaru forgot about the kitsune. He turned his gaze to the skies.

The flourish of fire above them was the slayer’s old firecat, drawing ever closer. On its back was a wizened figure, grey and white-streaked hair tied in one long braid across her shoulder.

“You better not be running, my Lord,” she called out. Jaken took an overlong gasp.

“Rin!”

The firecat descended. Jaken rushed to its side and so did Shippo, anger suddenly forgotten.

“Whoa whoa, be careful! I’ll get you down!”

“Rin, you wicked girl! You shouldn’t be travelling so recklessly!”

“Oh, pipe down, both of you. I’m not dust and bone yet.” Still, she took Shippo’s arm and descended with a shake in her knees, drawing her cane from the firecat’s back. She found her footing shortly and set her sights square ahead. Where the kitsune came armed with ire and bile, she greeted Sesshomaru with beaming sweetness. “It’s been a while since you came to visit, my lord.”

“…Rin.”

The world at large seemed to have blurred. He didn’t have ears for the rest of the party. Jaken was now shooing Shippo off Rin’s arm, something about showing respect for elders or not insulting Rin’s capabilities. A funny tune for him to sing. He’d called her a nuisance until she was long and lean and drawing looks from vile human men. Was it then he’d switched to defending her honour?

There was little need when Sesshomaru was near. The fools had scampered when they realized the pretty young thing had a youkai lord at her beck and call.

“Come now, it’s been so long. Don’t stand off so coldly.” Her cane was heavy on the grass but her gait was graceful. Her right leg bothered her nowadays, a weakness in the knees that had started some three years past. He had fetched her soothing herbs from Jinenji’s garden and the aches were mitigated, but only just so. He could no better stop her limbs from failing than he could smooth the happy wrinkles wrapping around her mouth.

Her eyes hadn’t changed. The shape around them was thinner and sagging but there was no disguising the brightness. The candid mischief. Life hadn’t soured her as it cruelly did so many.

She reached him in short order and did not shrug him off when he steadied her shoulder. She had grown shockingly tall for a woman, formerly standing as high as his cheek until time wore a curve in her spine and stole some of that stateliness away. She bent her neck to look him in the eye and put a hand to his chest.

“You’ve been away so long.”

“Forgive me.” Words no one should hear from his mouth. Far behind her the kitsune opened his infernal mouth but was shushed by Jaken before he could interject. “I had no intention to cause you worry.”

“Ah, but you did, and much more besides.” There was a knot curling between her brows. Her good cheer was waning. “He was as much a part of my life as he was Shippo’s, my Lord. I would like my chance to give thanks.”

“You can. The shrine still stands in your village, does it not?”

She shook her head. “Inuyasha would want to come home, too. You know his heart belonged to Kagome.”

His eyes narrowed. He hated the name. He despised her, he realized suddenly. The humanity he excused in Rin was unforgiveable in her. Her wasteful death had brought nothing but pain. Inuyasha had been a fool to grow so attached to the twit. To chase her heels like the lovesick puppy he always was, blinded, lapping up the faintest trickle of affection wherever he could find it. If she had never returned after the defeat of Naraku it would not have played out so. If she hadn’t have died then neither would he.

He wouldn’t have to stand here now, watching the shine of tears swell in Rin’s eyes. They were family to her, too. As they were to the kitsune, as they were to the taijiya and the monk and all their bedeviled offspring.

As they never were to him.

“We saved a spot next to her. It’s looking very lonely, my Lord.” She cocked her head and conjured an impish smirk, and just like that all trace of misery was dashed away. “Rin would like to see them together again.”

Sesshomaru did not bow his head or flinch, nor did he glance away in shame. Rin didn’t need such tells to understand she’d won. It was a battle lost from the start.

“…Would she, now?”

Her smile was brighter than the sun itself.

* * *

Arguing with Sesshomaru was impossible. He should know, he had to do it more than any idiot alive or dead. But Kagome loved her losing battles.

Her scent was comforting but it didn’t help to revive him like usual. What the hell was wrong with him? If the stench of blood were stronger he’d wonder if he was bleeding out from the asshole. There was no reason he should be knocked this flat. It was draining just to stay awake. His head was killing him and it was murder to keep his eyes stayed trained on Sesshomaru.

Whatever change of heart he’d had regarding him, it was clear that Kagome had never earned a sliver of fondness from the Lord of the West.

“I watched you grow old. You’re nothing more than an illusion, the same as he.”

Inuyasha glowered. “I told you, illusions don’t bleed.”

“Clearly they do.”

“Shut up!” Kagome snapped. She clapped a hand over Inuyasha’s mouth and he wrestled to escape. Success was limited. “Sesshomaru, this is a time long past yours. It’s five hundred years later. This is the time I was born in.”

“You expect me to believe such nonsense?”

“I do. Look out there. Does that look like the country you know?”

She swept a hand towards the lights, the erratic peaks of strange buildings against the skyline. He followed her guide but said nothing, eyes narrowed by a margin. “And that bike up there – the clothes I’m wearing, that helmet – do they look or smell like anything you know?”

“You’ve always worn frivolous rags and reeked of strangeness.”

Her jaw dropped. “ _Well_ ,” she carried on, straightening her back like a pissed bird puffing feathers, “ _Maybe_ that’s because I’m telling you the truth! You weren’t yourself when you woke up, were you? Do you even remember what happened?”

Sesshomaru was refusing to answer. His patience with her brand of spunk was notoriously short.

Inuyasha jutted his jaw free and wriggled to better face him. “You only think it’s all a dream. But you know better.”

The frigid front faltered, just for a moment. He had turned just so. Kagome was on her charge at once, stroking Inuyasha’s hair back until he shook his head.

“Inuyasha?” she ventured softly.

“Shht.” He shot her a pointed look and she clicked her mouth shut. With a shudder he pretended not to feel, Inuyasha brought himself to his elbows and let his middle drape down, his head hanging low. Fuck, he felt like he’d taken a lungful of ink fumes. “You weren’t hearing me right. Not at first. And you were made of nothing but light.”

This time he didn’t shrug Kagome off when she hefted him by his shoulders. He’d be damned if he said it out loud, but he needed the support. They slowly worked him up into a sit, his back to her chest, her chin on his shoulder and her arms around his middle. When Sesshomaru had done so earlier his chin had fit snug atop his head.

The daiyoukai was now oh so still, sequestered in stoicism as always. Seeing the two of them pressed tight after fighting for the same privilege must be torment. Should he move away from her? Could he even bear to do that? It was like Inuyasha was knotted up between them, a tether tied to two posts. Each was leaning away from the other and he had to let one go or snap.

“You remember enough. You remember falling asleep here, don’t you? You told me so before. How long do you think that took? ‘Cause it definitely wasn’t quick.” Inuyasha’s strength was far from returning, but there was purpose enough in his words to rouse him. Driven by the need to protect the fragile form at his back. To preserve the pillar of glass in front. “How about waking up? Do you remember what made you do it?”

Sesshomaru looked over his shoulder. Behind him was the rising cliff, his home for so many centuries. He hesitated to speak. “I sensed…”

But that was it. He continued to stare. His calculations played out in silence, privy to none. Kagome straightened against him.

“You sensed Inuyasha.”

He looked back their way but made no comment. A yes in his terms.

“There was that place…”

“The onsen,” Kagome provided.

“It’s a fucking playhouse for lazy modern people.” There was a scoff and an unkind nudge but he carried on. “It’s true. We were both there. Kagome and me.”

He regarded them both a moment longer, then stared back in the direction of the lodges. They were too distant to trace the details but their pointed silhouettes were unmistakeable, lit by modern magic. Same as the specks of the city below, but these shone with more flourish.

“And that woman.”

Kagome leaned in. “My mother.”

Sesshomaru considered this with a clipped hum, likely muted to Kagome’s human ears. The resemblance would be impossible to deny if he could remember enough of her face.

“She’s sick now, you know. Just like Inuyasha is.”

“What?” Inuyasha twisted to her with a jaw gone slack. “What the hell do you mean?”

“I mean she basically fainted. Lots of people have. Anyone who got a good look at the giant dog that came down from the mountain is lying around sick and tired and halfway passed out.” 

Sesshomaru’s eyes whipped over him. Limp legged, weight carried whole by the waif of a girl behind him. Inuyasha’s mind was a flurry, thoughts zipping in all directions like wasps bursting from a nest.

“You know what I think?” Kagome rose, settling atop her knees. Her voice was steady and calm, and it hurt to think it but at times like this he could hear echoes of Kikyo in her. “I think that when the world changed, people stopped believing in unusual things. And everything that we knew – youkai, mystics, monks – they lost their powers a little bit each day, until eventually they had nothing at all. And if something were to come back, in this day and this time, it would need to take strength from somewhere else.”

The Noh mask. Inuyasha remembered its deadly search for a fitting body, strength enough to sustain itself in this barren realm. It had been awakened by the presence of the jewel shards and laid dormant for centuries before. Only the Soul Piper remained in the full breadth of its power, but it was seen chiefly by the dead. That was an easier legend to keep alive. No one needed to see it to spread the word.

“You’re still shining around the edges, Sesshomaru. How long did it take before you started to feel like yourself?”

Sesshomaru raised one hand. He turned it over the in moonlight. Held it against the sky, all the better to see the radiant gleam dancing over his skin. “And you alone are unaffected?”

“I’m not.” She withdrew one hand so she could pull the shards loose for inspection, dangling off her necklace in their glinting jar. “I just have these with me. If I didn’t I’d be down and out too.”

He closed his hand. “Yet Inuyasha causes you no such trouble.”

“That’s different. She didn’t have to wake me from the dead.”

“Not – well. After I pulled out the arrow, no.” Kagome shook her head. “We can go back and forth, him and I. This Inuyasha is the one from the past. The one you remember from old times. He’s just visiting.”

It was a heavy shovel of bullshit to swallow. But really, what more could explain it? The evidence was all there. Inuyasha had often wondered if Sesshomaru noticed that the puny priestess dogging his heels smelled like a whirlwind cast off a foreigner’s ship. Once you discounted human things like flesh and sweat and blood, you got walloped with the curl of her perfumed soaps. She wore clothes woven with neither silk nor cotton, and there was a sour bend to the metal of her bike and the “rubber” wheels. Youkai could be found wearing all sorts of strange clothes and creating unearthly trinkets, but none came close to the oddities she brought around.

Sesshomaru’s nose was far better than his. He would have clocked every one of those things at once. It was more likely he just never cared.

Sesshomaru studied the pair of them for a tempestuous moment. Inuyasha couldn’t say what he made of it all. Or what they even expected of him, now that they’d laid the matter out bare. He padded towards them. Kagome stiffened behind him but Inuyasha jutted his chin upwards. Their eyes were locked on one another.

He could imagine a thousand meanings behind the placid stare. Mourning. Shock. Curiosity. Contempt.

Sesshomaru turned his back on them both. He drifted to the cliff’s edge and assumed a monk-like posture as he sat down, contemplating the dark horizon and its marvelous modern lights.

Inuyasha wet his lips, deliberating. He could hear his pulse swish in his ears. He couldn’t shake the scent of him from his nose. He twisted to Kagome, who gnawed her lip with worry.

“Should we…” she whispered, then chewed the lip some more. He didn’t know why she bothered lowering her voice, Sesshomaru would be able to hear them no matter how quiet their muttering. Inuyasha pushed forward, and she followed suit.

Leaning heavily on her tiny shoulders, Inuyasha trudged the short walk to the cliff’s edge and took a spot at Sesshomaru’s side. Kagome dropped down beside him. The three sat in a descending line, Sesshomaru the highest point and Kagome the lowest with Inuyasha holding the center. They watched the stars glitter down on the still night.

* * *

He smelled more mortals than he saw as he strode through the dusty thoroughfare. They were not as bold as they used to be. With the death of Inuyasha and Sesshomaru’s presence grown infrequent, they returned to scattering on sight and whispering behind their hands. As he drew Rin off of Ah-Un’s back they craned their necks and shushed their young, watching close as he guided her ahead. Shippo, Jaken, and the firecat followed behind.

“Are you all such cowards? Honestly,” Rin huffed, throwing a giggle to her lord. “It’s as if you’ve never paid any visits at all.”

“They fear my favor has changed.” Sesshomaru ventured idly.

“Mmm. Yes, I suppose they must.” She hummed. “I think they should only expect to see you less.”

“You believe I would abandon you?”

“Of course not. I just know how dull it is for you to keep coming here.”

Now that Inuyasha was gone.

Neither needed to say it. Sesshomaru cast a sidelong glance at what he was sure were two of the taijiya’s grandchildren. One stocky boy was the age Rin would have been when she emerged from the woods, offering him dried fish and wide grins to cure his ailments. He even had the missing tooth to match. “There is enough to return for.”

She smiled and said no more.

They cleared the steps of the shrine with the aid of flight, solely to spare Rin’s knees. From there he was guided to the grave.

Stone slabs and wooden posts marked the passing of humans. Insignificant, short-lived, most of them long forgotten within weeks. It seemed frivolous to him to make such ceremony for their dead, surely it was common enough to become a nuisance. He glanced to the side and caught Kohaku’s name. It was scrawled down a stone no more than two hands high. At its side was his sister, who in turn was laid next to her monk.

Kohaku had been a man, but not old. Slaying youkai was a treacherous craft. Sesshomaru averted his eyes. An icy wash careened through his middle. Maybe humans would forget but he could still summon Kohaku in his mind’s eye, swinging his sickle, contemplating idle things with dreamy mien. Rin had clung to his side and wept in the privacy of his sleeve, secluded in the forest as the other humans packed dirt over her old friend.

The post for the priestess was one of the finest hewn in the lot. Great care had been taken with the carving of her name. **Higurashi Kagome**. The characters strode down the stone from top to bottom with stately precision, the last strokes obfuscated with offerings of flowers. It was months later and they continued laying them down.

He stopped cold and ignored Rin’s imploring stare. The flowers were fresh and many, white and pink and golden, stems bright green as if freshly cut. Though absent of incense the holder at the base was dusted with fresh ash. He didn’t realize she’d had a surname. The girl had always been odd, her origins never disclosed. It was as if she materialized from the forest floor to pull the arrow from Inuyasha’s heart. Perhaps that was why he was forever indebted to her.

To the left, newer laid and equally besieged with offerings, was a stone engraved with a single name. It stood on equal height with the priestess’s, carved lovingly, polished and preciously maintained. He could feel poison burble beneath his claws. He’d like to dash it into rubble. Melt it. Erase it. Leave it far behind him.

“Well,” said Shippo, fists balled at his side and jaw clenched tight. “Are you gonna do it or what?”

Jaken, Rin, and Shippo all looked to him in tandem. How exasperating. Ought there be a monk presiding? Were they trying to observe human ritual or simply guilt him into handing over the body?

There was nothing so grotesque as a conjured corpse. He’d explained the situation as best as he could, but only Jaken was unsurprised when he drew out a black pearl from the folds of his robes.

Once he’d plucked it from the jelly of Inuyasha’s eye and savagely reveled in his shriek of pain. Fetching it again from a cold human corpse had made him want to sink forever into the earth. The eye couldn’t heal itself this time, so he’d shuttered the lids and gingerly cleared the mess before wrapping him in a shroud. If such a spell were possible he would tear the memory from his head forever.

“That’s it?” The kitsune leaned around Rin and wrinkled his nose at the reveal. “That’s the entrance to your father’s tomb?”

“Of course it is! Lord Sesshomaru would never lie about such a thing! Ungrateful fox!”

“Jaken.” One word from the daiyoukai shut the both of them up. Sesshomaru strode forth. The pearl lay in the center of his upturned palm.

He needn’t have bothered. Once he was within arm’s length of the grave the thing flashed white and rose from his hand. It hung in the air before his eyes, glinting and bright.

Then it shot down in the soil like a pellet from a musket, too deep to be seen.

There was a moment’s peace before the eruption of wind and green flame from the grave, swirling around and around until the fire converged into the shape of a man.

It was Inuyasha at his very best. Bright eyed with a cocky grin drawn crooked across his face, hair thrown haughtily over his shoulders. He was made pale in the sunlight and without shadows, just like the last time. The rest of the onlookers gasped. Jaken shrieked. Sesshomaru alone remained stalwart in place.

Shippo was instantly overrun with tears. “Inuyasha?” he called with a trembling croak. Rin covered her face but her cheeks were already wet, newly slicked trails that ran fierce and sullied the collar of her kimono.

The specter tossed them a fond look. It moved slowly as if treading river water, but the parting wave was unmistakeable. Shippo snatched Rin by the sleeve and thrust his cheek into the cloth, unable to bear the sight any longer. She tucked him under one arm and whispered sweet things in his ear. Jaken could only gape, hands twisted around the Staff of Heads. He was no doubt tying a few loose ends together about the strange occurrences of weeks past.

Sesshomaru appeared unphased to all, but only because he was committing the sight to permanent record. This was the Inuyasha he never saw, not from any closer than one end of a valley to the other. It was a boy brimming with joy. No knots in his brow, no offense taken. He was beaming and perfect and irrefutably visceral, even as a half-faded ghost. He was Sesshomaru’s opposite in every conceivable way: vivid, tempestuous, unmasked and present. He envied this openness for the first time. He envied Rin and Shippo for seeing the scope of his humors for the past seventy years. He envied the soil that now ensconced the pearl, sucking away the heat of his breast where he’d stowed it all this time.

Then Inuyasha cast that golden gaze on him. He reached up, not for his rosary but for the fine bones of Sesshomaru’s cheeks. When he spoke his voice dragged behind the motion of his mouth, and ricocheted as if bouncing off cave walls.

“Don’t stick around here too long, all right?” Sesshomaru parted his lips but words fled from him in droves. The touch of those hands was no more than mist. “When there’s nowhere left to go, we’ll be waiting for you.”

He thought he heard a woman calling. _In-u-ya-sha._

The ghost shifted and grinned over his shoulder, for she was there too. Hanging high in the air above and exactly as she used to be, in her rippled green cloth and white top with arms outstretched in welcome, glorious in her girlish youth. Love shone strong and shameless in her eyes. No guard, no conditions. That was what made all the difference, wasn’t it? When she looked upon him she only saw a boy in want of a home.

She reached a hand down to her hanyou, and he took it without a second thought.

The wind swirled, trees shed their leaves and petals were plucked from their grave flowers to dance around them, a multicoloured hurricane. Shippo threw an arm up to guard Rin, Jaken stamped his staff into the ground for purchase. Their robes all fluttered and snapped at their legs. Then the winds dropped, petals scattered, and the ghosts were nowhere to be found.

Sesshomaru was still planted at the foot of the grave. He did nothing to dispel the petals that dripped over his hair and shoulders. Though foolish, he could believe real warmth lingered where the hanyou had held him. A touch as brief as koi breaching water.

* * *

He was trapped, this was certain, but neither jailer seemed eager to badger him. Kagome was uncharacteristically silent to his left where Sesshomaru was silent as usual to his right. All three were arrested by an immovable weight bearing down their backs. Inuyasha had to breathe slow and keep blinking. He remained awake by necessity. Only his nerves and fretting saved him from dropping backwards into a dead slumber. He scratched his claws into the stone and remembered raking lusty lines over Sesshomaru’s pale spine.

He couldn’t look Kagome in the eye right now, but she wasn’t pushing for it either. What must she be thinking? Nothing much was revealed from a quick peek her way. She was all but imitating his brother, unreadable and fixated on what lay beyond the horizon.

“Had you planned to kill me with that dull metal stick?”

Kagome jolted at his side. She looked to Inuyasha, mildly alarmed. She hadn’t expected to find herself under further interrogation. “Uh. Kill might be a stretch, but…”

“Inuyasha would be long dead, and you would have followed him in an instant.”

She squawked. Inuyasha rushed to her defense. Sort of.

“Like hell I would be!”

“I didn’t have much time! I grabbed whatever I could!”

Sesshomaru turned a callous eye her way. “And what of your arrows? Did you drop them carelessly somewhere?”

“I – look, I don’t _need_ them when I’m here, there’s no youkai to slay! All my stuff’s back in the past, with Sango and Miroku. Geez!”

“There are youkai here beside you now. And you would have failed to do anything.”

“Hey now, that is entirely beside the—”

“Do not take your duties lightly, priestess.” He turned from her again with a scornfully raised chin. “You cannot always hide behind the backs of your betters. You have power. If you fail to use it when needed, then Inuyasha’s blood will be on your hands.”

Kagome reddened and looked ready to argue more, but her knee bumped Inuyasha’s as she twisted and she startled. Then her eyes grew wet and she withdrew from them both.

Inuyasha wasn’t sure what to say. He was okay now. Sesshomaru hadn’t hurt him. More or less. Not anything that was truly his own fault. And she shouldn’t have to apologize for shit, it was his job to protect her, and it was usually a safe realm, there was no need to lay into her like that.

Maybe it would be easier to chew out Sesshomaru.

Except he couldn’t bring himself to do that, either. One look and the courage died inside his throat. Inuyasha folded his arms into his sleeves and hunched over, head low. Sesshomaru was warning her. Even if he knew damn well they both lived long past this moment. Not that he’d believe it, because this whole night was going on for years. What he wouldn’t give for a little sleep.

He teetered forward. A clawed hand tugged him back at once. A blunt nailed one hovered at his other side, a hair’s breadth from doing the same at slower paces.

“Must you make yourself a burden, Inuyasha?”

“Don’t insult him,” Kagome snapped, and pulled one of his arms free.

“What the fuck, you guys?”

“If you’re only gonna pitch over the side of this cliff after all that, then good riddance!” She wrapped the arm around her shoulder and huffed. “Don’t you dare pass out.”

“I wasn’t gonna fall! Like I’m gonna let something stupid like that happen!”

Sesshomaru made a sound of dissent but did not comment, which was just as good as saying he would. If Inuyasha wasn’t so fucking tired…

“This world,” Sesshomaru started, turning a hand towards the distant town below, ignorant of the dark fate he had narrowly avoided. “This is the end of our kind. Pushed to its edges and vanished from sight.”

Inuyasha was still peeved, but answered with a slow, “I guess.”

Kagome was tucking her anger away better than he was. “I don’t think anyone meant to do it. It just happened.”

“Long before your birth, I suppose. Or you would disclose something useful to prevent it.”

She glowered at that. Then thought a little. “Maybe.” She picked at a thread on her pyjama legs. “I didn’t think youkai were real until I met Inuyasha.”

“Keh. No wonder you were always so fucking careless,” he intoned, expecting a hit. She did not rise to the occasion and somehow that stung worse than any pinch. The bruises and bites at his neck throbbed and he squashed them under his palm.

“Indeed.” Sesshomaru hadn’t finished his thought though. “If it’s as you say, then this is a paradise for mortal men to live out their sorry lives. There is no precedence for one such as I to exist here.”

Kagome drew her knees close together, eyes fixed low. “No,” she conceded, and sounded sad for it.

“Nor is there a place for Inuyasha.”

Inuyasha looked to Kagome for guidance and she had nothing but a tight grimace to give him. They never spoke of it aloud. It was a truth too plain to air. He could traipse through the well as much as he pleased, but he would never be more than a freakish anomaly among long stemmed towers and whirring machines.

“The air is dead here. The stench of mortals rises even to this mountain’s peak. And even you will return to the comfort of eras gone past. What reason is there to linger?”

“You…” Inuyasha leaned towards him on one arm and stifled another tremble. “Listen, if we can go back and forth then maybe—”

“Hold your tongue.” He did. His throat was closing up with dread. “There is already one of me there.”

“Yeah, but…you’re not much alike anymore.”

“Give it time.”

Inuyasha didn’t think he would ever see the day where Sesshomaru shed the ice off his heart. As a matter of fact he could guarantee it, since he was going to bite the dust before the asshole bothered turning a corner. That was the whole damn problem. He growled, a rumble that went belly deep and pushed his ears flat to his head.

“Well, _fuck_ that! How the hell am I supposed to look at him again? Huh?” He could spit. He could hit him. He could push right off the cliff and just get the miserable business over with, take the bastard with him while he was at it. “So what, I gotta keep trying to kick his ass like always? Forget it! I don’t wanna do it anymore!”

Kagome grabbed his sleeve at the same moment Sesshomaru seized the back of his head. Inuyasha gritted his teeth and rioted to get loose. Neither would let him. “Fuck you then!”

“You will fight him,” Sesshomaru insisted. He bore into him with the sternness of a lecturing father. “Then after a time you will fight at his side. You will find peace. Sooner than you may think.”

“Yeah right,” Inuyasha snapped. “He fucking hates me.”

“That is his folly. Not yours. Remember this much, if you can take nothing else with you to the past.”

“He already saved me from that creepy poison master,” Kagome chimed in. “He’s not as bad as he used to be. There’s that little girl with him too.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t _try_.”

“I was raised at the expense of mortal life, Inuyasha. Even you are made weaker for my being here. Would you risk the girl’s mother to keep me close?”

He gaped. Kagome pulled hard on his sleeve. She was weighing on him like a drowning stone. He could see Mrs. Higurashi in the throes of fright. He could see her giggling behind her hand at the dinner table. Encasing Kagome in her arms and pushing a kiss to her hair. Long ago, when he was too small to know how true hunger threaded hooks in your belly and dragged it into your spine, he’d had those luxuries to himself. Then wasting sickness sunk his mother into the ground and he was left in the capricious care of the forest. Sweet moments like that were always on the precipice of being forgotten. Watching them repeat between mother and daughter kept dragging them back from the brink.

No. He couldn’t take that from her. But he shouldn’t have to lose another damn thing himself. “What…what if it’s different once we’re back?”

“Are you altered when you leap between times?” Sesshomaru raised a brow. “If so I’d accuse you of leaving your senses behind, but you’ve always been obtuse.”

Inuyasha scowled. “Now you sound like yourself.”

“Quiet.”

Kagome was leaning closer now too, trying to catch the eye of either brother. “He’s right. We don’t even know if taking him along would be possible. The things we do here and there are probably permanent. They’ve already happened. Nothing we’ve taken back or done has changed anything that’s happening now. Mama might stay sick, and so might you.”

She wasn’t being fair. Inuyasha was near snarling. “You don’t know that.”

“Well, you sure weren’t stuck to the tree in my shrine when I was growing up. That means I was always going to come back to take that arrow out of your heart.”

Inuyasha could scream. So it would be _fate._ He got free of the sacred tree and Sesshomaru would take his place as a dead display, turned to stone after eons of solitude. Forgotten until he was made a spectacle, something for dumbass mortals to ogle after they farted bubbles in the hot springs. He could choke. What a loathsome notion. Absolutely disgusting, absolutely unfair.

If there was only one part of Sesshomaru that he wished had stayed the same, it would be his sense of pride. The Sesshomaru behind the well would behead all three of the bickering idiots in one swoop before hearing another word of this. This one was too quiet. Not a peep in his own defense. He reeked of regrets. Resignation. Things old men had to worry about.

Then Sesshomaru cast a weary gaze upon and it hit Inuyasha so suddenly he thought he’d been belted with a rock. It was very easy to believe someone was young when time was slow in taking its toll. Mrs. Higurashi wore her age in sprightly lines that didn’t quite fade when her smile dropped. Kaede wore it in her rasping words and sagging skin. Sesshomaru wore his years on the inside. He offered glimpses through insights and low-lidded glances.

Old man. Impetuous youth no more.

Still, he spoke. “There is yet one chance.”

“Huh?”

His brother was watching him closely again. His fingers twitched at the back of his head, and without warning he pulled him whole to his side. One hand wrapped at his waist while the other cradled his hair, and his mouth was perfectly aligned to his ear. He took his breath from the heat of Inuyasha’s scalp. Soaking up his scent. From behind he heard Kagome hiss in air and hold it tight. He suddenly wanted to turn back and embrace her too. It wasn’t the same, it wasn’t what it looked like, she couldn’t understand with just the sight alone.

But Sesshomaru was already speaking to him. “In one sense, you do have time. So heed me, Inuyasha.”

He gulped and nodded. He tangled his fingers in his silks for support.

“When the strife has passed and the humans are gone, you will come to me. I will turn you away, but you must return and try again. Do you understand?”

Inuyasha drew his gaze up. The yukata rumpled around his nose and the choppy cut of his bangs infiltrated the view, but he could see the same softness in Sesshomaru now that he’d felt when they were bare skinned and locked together.

“I’ll come to you?”

“You will.” Sesshomaru nodded. “I won’t understand at first. But you must come back.”

Inuyasha’s fingers flexed. And felt nothing. His breath stopped tight in his throat. His eyes burned under the brightness as the pallor fled from Sesshomaru’s cheeks, the markings there paled from indigo to lilac to watery pinks.

His scent was thinning. He was fading.

“Sesshomaru—”

“Eventually there will be none but you and I. That is where we can change our fates. Promise me.”

“I…”

There was a tug at his hair and then his lips were on him once more. It was a kiss with finality. Soft, stealing moments, full of notions that words would fail to capture. He tasted like clear running water and smelled like something carried too far on the wind to catch.

“We met again here and now. That’s our second chance.” He pushed his nose into his cheek and Inuyasha felt no heat. “See that we do not waste it.”

Then the body holding him tight beamed bright, flashing like a comet. It had no weight and conformed to the shape of his brother by the barest means. It turned its head to the side and Inuyasha was just close enough to see that it still had a mouth to smile, though he couldn’t tell at what. It was facing something unseen in empty air.

“Even now?” it echoed, the voice as cavernous and hollow as it had started.

Then the glowing form snapped together and vanished.

He sat on his own as if nothing had embraced him at all, strong in his core but with palms open and empty. His head had cleared. Ease was creeping into muscle and bone, but he couldn’t catch his breath. Kagome pressed a hand to his back and said nothing.

Good. He wasn’t fit to talk anyway, with his throat knotted up and all this burning sting in his eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOW ABOUT THAT SEQUEL ANIME, HUH? I can't believe they're reviving this canon. Why is 2020 committed to being a funhouse mirror?
> 
> Apologies about how long this took. I knew how I wanted this to end, it was the execution that tripped me up. But it is here, and I once again thank everyone who has taken the time to read this, leave kudos, comments, or add it to their bookmarks or subscriptions. I'm so grateful to you, and I hope that you're all hanging in there all right. Good times come to an end, but so do bad times. There'll be better days coming.

Whatever might pass between them in the years to come, well, that was gonna happen. One way or another. It still didn’t make living with tonight much easier. Kagome had slunk into the seat of the dirtbike and staunchly refused to let Inuyasha carry both it and her back to the lodge. He had his limits, and she wasn’t in the mood to cling to his back.

Instead he had to cling to hers. Somehow that was more tolerable, probably because it wasn’t normal. He could have ran. Probably shouldn’t after all this, but she wasn’t going to call him out and she wasn’t going to assume what he felt like. After doing all that.

Her mind kept rewinding it. Sesshomaru looking intensely at his younger brother with a nuance she was too naive to pin down until it was too late, even after seeing the mess on his neck. He’d reached for Inuyasha. Sniffed his hair. Whispered in his ear. Kissed him on the mouth.

 _Kissed_. Tongue and spit and holding him elegantly at his shoulder, like they were the centre of some lusty renaissance painting.

Her heart was one nasty open wound and she kept wishing she could just flee to the dark woods for a good cry. She needed to let off the steam. Turn the knob so the hose could gush and gush and let the water whoosh out of her until she was dry as a bone. It wasn’t like seeing him with Kikyo. That was different. How can she even put it?

 _A threat_. Kagome grimaced and hitched up the speed. Kikyo was a terrifying prospect because that was a love that could kill Inuyasha. Were she still alive it might also make him happy, and that was scary too. Then there was the comparison, their shared faces and the tragedy of it all that eclipsed her own feelings time and again.

This case was different because it was a sucker punch. A complete brick to the face. There were some similarities, sure. Sesshomaru was dangerous. Sesshomaru was tragic. He even echoed Kikyo’s cool as ice attitude and her veiled words, wicked intellect behind an impassive mask. Yet the Lord of the West rang even louder bells of alarm. _Brother. Enemy._ In that order. _Male_ came before both, and she hated herself for it. So much for being the open-minded ambassador of future progress. 

She hadn’t planned to say anything. She didn’t know how she would start. Besides, the hurt in her heart was trumped by the reality of what had just happened. Beaming lights and quiet evaporation couldn’t sugar coat the cold truth: Sesshomaru had died up there. Contentious as their bond had been, Inuyasha needed space. He needed room to grieve, even if how to go about it was a mystery. They’d see Sesshomaru again. Just in far worse humors and with no memory of this night. Kagome envied him that a little.

So she had waited at Inuyasha’s side in silence, stroking his back. He spent a long while looking at the stars. No tears, though she could tell he’d been crying at some point. His pride was too potent to let it happen a second time. Eventually she had stood and quietly reminded him that she needed to make sure her mother was okay.

It was then he’d chased after her, assuming the worst and being mostly right. Kagome wait, Kagome you don’t understand. She didn’t want to twist the knife tonight, not in his gut and not in hers. It was too fresh and they would need the extra time to think. Yet he had started it. He shouldn’t have, but he did.

The thing was, Inuyasha didn’t know what to make of the mess either. She’d always known he wanted family. He could puff his chest and boast that he didn’t care about this or that, swear he’ll kick that bastard’s ass and blah blah blah, but he was starving for it. He was the loneliest person she had ever met. In the shouting match that followed he’d sworn he was bewildered to start, because Sesshomaru couldn’t have been capable of anything but beating the life out of him.

Kagome could accept he was shocked enough to endure some stolen kisses, because what _wasn’t_ shocking about this? The ghostly countenance could excuse a few more. You couldn’t fight off the incorporeal with fists or claws. That didn’t stop her pointing a shaking finger to his bitten neck and misaligned hakama tie, declaring he wasn’t shocked for long and that Sesshomaru had been rock solid by the time she showed up. He had nearly wrenched his own hair out. He’d been begging her, out and out begging her to understand.

“I didn’t know what to do! I didn’t!”

“Do you lo—” She’d cracked on the word. He’d swooped in to take her hands and she pulled away. He was left standing dumbstruck and looking too small for his own billowing clothes.

“I don’t know,” he said, faint and fearful.

Kagome had swallowed one heck of a lump and dashed her tears away with the back of her sleeve. “I know…I get there’s some weird time thing, and…do you wind up falling in love? Is that what he said?”

His lips were bloodless in their bitter press. If no word ever squeezed between them again she wouldn’t have been surprised. His pause was overlong and his voice gravelly when he finally admitted, “No.”

“Then what?” She had loathed this. It was like pressing fingernails into open wounds. “Do you think you could…in the future, could you love him?”

He thought about this for some time. “Maybe.” His eyes were downcast. It wasn’t a prospect that excited him, but it wasn’t a ‘no’.

Then, in a night of many firsts he committed another. He brought his hands to his face. Shoved the palms in like he wanted to push the whole thing out the other side of his skull. It muffled his words, and somehow compounded their quaking shame. “I couldn’t give him what he wanted. So I gave him what I had.”

Kagome studied him close. “What he wanted?” she asked slowly.

It seemed like Sesshomaru had gotten it and then some, thank you very much. The ugly thought was banished when she saw his fingers crook in and she had an irrational panic. Her hands were on his before she could think. “Inuyasha, your claws—”

She plucked them away. He hadn’t raked the skin on his forehead but there were pointed presses from the tips, quickly smothered as his bangs fell back into place. His golden eyes were drained of their zeal. They were dark things, hollowed out like the shells of nuts. 

“He said he watched you grow old. And then I died after you.”

She had stood there with his hands in hers for god knows how long, but found nothing more to say.

Kagome had teetered out of the conversation and onto the bike, mostly silent. Her brains were knocked out of her. There was a lot to be implied.

She lives, he lives, they live. They live together, they live in the Feudal era and not with her Mom and Souta and Grandpa, and she parts from this world decades later as an old woman. Then he follows her. It was an answer to a question that had nipped at her heels for months, pinched her out of sleep and dragged her gaze to rainy day skies: was there any hope for the two of them?

In turn, it was also an answer to her question on that gusty, barren plateau. A few hard centuries after scrapping over Tessaiga, Sesshomaru ditched the sword and now wanted what Kagome did. Except she gets it in the end and he doesn’t.

Getting the last laugh, so to speak. She didn’t feel much like laughing.

The only upside to this debacle was that she found it easier to manage the bike the second time around. No panic to shake her, no headaches, and a more than passing knowledge of how to rev the engine without pitching herself off the back. She was miserable and drained yet topped to the brim with blazing hurt and sympathy for both brothers. A healthy dose for herself, too. Her head was a ripe mess. It was a blessing to have some rote task to lose herself in. Riding the dirtbike hit that sweet spot of using just enough brainpower that she could lose herself in thoughts if she wanted, or she could lose herself in the open road. Forget about the body wrapped around hers from behind, arms so strong and heart so bruised. She alternated between the two, taking blank respite for a few minutes before jumping into another round of mental handwringing.

She had a new question now: could they ever go back to normal after this?

After forty minutes of stunning placidity from both parties, Inuyasha had become hard to ignore. More than once he seemed to cinch in around her, and that was twice now he’d pushed his nose into her scalp. She tried to be subtle and shrug out of it, but then he did it a third time.

“What is that smell?” came his groggy voice.

It took her a moment to grasp what he meant. Talk about left of field. “Gasoline, Inuyasha. It’s what makes the bike go fast.”

He groaned and thrust his face fully into her hair, and she swerved a hair too far to the left. “Don’t do that while I’m driving!” she snapped, righting the buzzing bike with a clumsy jerk.

“But it _stinks_.”

“So do the cars. You just can’t smell it as much when you’re inside them.” Or going at the maximum speed limit where the wind whipped it all away. They were going fast now but not fast enough to muster that same magic.

“I thought everything in your era just smelled like that. Up close this smoke is just… _ugh_.” He settled for hugging her middle tighter with one arm and raising the other to cover his nose. “You can’t block out this stench for shit.”

“Stop whining! We’re almost there. Geez, and you were the guy that was so gung-ho about getting one of these before.”

“That’s before I got a good whiff. If I throw up it’ll be your fault.”

“Noooo, it’s yours because you—”

“ _Kagome!_ ”

There was a tree trunk dead ahead.

The arm at her waist yanked and yanked hard, and then they were skidding on the dirt. Inuyasha took the brunt of the fall as he clutched her tight. The dirtbike roared forth without them, on a kamikaze mission to meet the middle of an ancient pine’s trunk. It crumpled at the front wheel on impact, spun spectacularly to the left, and finally tumbled clear off the cliffside.

The pair watched it careen into darkness. It hit six trees on the way down.

Inuyasha’s brows were threatening to marry his hairline. “Wow. Your mom wasn’t kidding.”

Kagome gaped at the dark maw that had swallowed the dirtbike. After all that had happened tonight, this somehow still felt unbelievable. 

She pushed her face into the grass and moaned weakly. “How am I gonna _pay_ for that?”

* * *

The lodge was full of hale and healthy patrons by the time they scurried in around the back, brushing any guilty signs of nature from their clothes and trying to blend with the crowd. There were also a hearty helping of soldiers in crisp uniforms, their boxy cars flashing colored lights that seared Inuyasha’s eyes. There were healers, who were no longer quite needed, men in baggy orange get-ups following attendants to check for unseen damage, and guards in blue taking statements on flip notebooks with quickly darting pens. Kagome and Inuyasha managed to dodge all of these and met her mother in the middle of the guest hall. She thrust her arms around both at the same time and didn’t bother to hide her happy tears.

“You two! You two, I was so worried! Did you get the—”

“Mom!” Kagome hissed, making a common gesture of hers that had flummoxed Inuyasha the first time he’d seen it. She’d said dial it down and he’d said, what’s a dial? Her mother got the hint straight away.

“Did you get the youkai?” she whispered, and none too subtly patted at Kagome’s side. Inuyasha’s arms, too. Checking for wounds, he realized with a sudden snap.

“Yeah,” he said quickly. “It was nothing. Fucker went down like a fish on land.”

Kagome gave him a heavy loaded look, and he gave her one of conspiracy. Her mother was babbling, fussing with her daughter’s clothes and dusting his sleeves with frenetic energy. He would tell her, Inuyasha decided then. Someday. When they had another moment together alone. He could say it was someone he knew from the past and whose ghost wanted a chat. He would tell her that her daughter outlives it all.

She deserved that. It might make watching Kagome drop down the well just a little bit easier.

They gave a statement, Kagome and her mother doing most of the talking, and then they made a wild song and dance where they gestured behind the guard’s back so that Inuyasha did not say anything too stupid or suspicious on his turn. His bandana was tied on once more and the guard seemed to think it made him look like bad news, but he had other business to mind. A lot of the guests were still spooked, a few raving about a white ghost, or an “angel” (“It’s like a god’s messenger in the West,” intoned Kagome), or even in one case something called Mothra. That one came from a little girl about as tall as his hip, so no one paid the guess any mind.

At some point they wiggled to the outer rim of the hullabaloo, where Kagome grabbed her mother’s arm with a guilty smile. “So, um, I might have wrecked a dirt bike to get back here.”

Mrs. Higurashi blinked.

The next thing he knew, all three were in the car with their bags and sneaking out in the dark.

“Isn’t this dishonest?” Kagome squeaked from the backseat.

“Do as I say and not as I do,” the woman hissed, head twisted over her shoulder as she maneuvered the car backwards. They swung hard to the right and hit the mountain road with haste.

Inuyasha turned to look out the back. The plateau beyond the lodges was smooth and barren, just as they left it. All the rocks had crumbled down to parts unseen. No trace remained of the sleeping beast.

The leather beneath his claws was giving in to their points. He was clutching the seat with a strangling grip. The car took a spin around one of the winding corners and the plateau slid behind the mountain’s bulk and greenery.

Inuyasha kept watching for it to reappear again, but it never did.

He slid back into the seat and was grateful for the hum of the vehicle, the closed windows to lock out the gasoline fumes. The lack of chatter between mother and daughter. He would prefer to be amongst the trees right now. Sorting his thoughts in solitude. Instead he had a thrumming motor as a meditative pulse and the whoosh of cool air from slotted vents in the car roof, and that would have to do.

They shouldn’t go back right away. Maybe he would. Kagome should finish the rest of her holiday whether it was at the mountain or not, and she probably wanted him to fuck off for a while. If he returned alone he’d have to shake off Sango and Miroku, the latter being especially sticky when he sniffed good gossip. Shippo could be dodged easily unless he was bored, then he was like a burr ratted up in your hair.

On the other hand, there was little chance he’d soon see his brother again. Little, but not completely out of the question.

His toes flexed and he shifted in his seat. It would have been better to take a second splash in the hot springs before leaving. The stickiness between his legs had dried only in parts and was going crusty where it spread thinnest, especially where Sesshomaru had rubbed it along his thigh. Kagome might not be able to smell shit but Inuyasha was sweltering in a fog of sex and sweat and daiyoukai. Now that the lodge and its army of nosy humans were behind them, he had lost his footing again. There was nothing to nag about, nothing to distract him from the sins spelled out in dried spit under his clothes. He couldn’t meet her mother’s eyes when she smiled at him in the thin mirror that pointed into the back seat. The bites were already cinching back together, scabrous and shrinking smaller behind the bundle of hair he’d thrown to the front of his shoulder. Was that enough cover though? She would spy them sooner or later.

Fucking hell. What _had_ he been thinking?

In another few days he might believe he dreamed it. All signs would be washed away, until Sesshomaru shot from the sky with his blades drawn and Inuyasha was left to crumple at the sight. Kikyo could paralyze him just by showing her face. Sesshomaru half did already. If he came to him now what would Inuyasha see? What would Sesshomaru? Would he smell it on him, days or weeks or months later? If he didn’t sense the dregs of what happened then it would be the flashes of doubt, the faltering of his step. The scent of his memories, rising in blushes on his cheeks and smothered in the cradle of his hakama.

He would kill him. He would call him disgusting or useless and it wouldn’t slough off his back like usual, because now he knew what his affection could feel like. Coveted by the same lord that called him a worthless beast.

He wasn’t sure he wanted what Sesshomaru was offering in the first place. He’d never laid with anyone. Didn’t imagine it was in the cards for him, exiled from both races and loving women too good for him, women destined to leave him. One wouldn’t. Maybe. He couldn’t look Kagome in the eye any more than he could her mother. His face was resolutely pressed into the chilly glass window. When he tried to picture a life with Sesshomaru in her stead he only drew blanks, and his gut took to nervous spins. The thought frightened him even in abstraction.

Distant brother, better man, mortal enemy, cruel tormenter, icy aristocrat. Sesshomaru had played all those parts, and not a one of them wanted shit to do with him. Those impressions kept cutting through the phantom touch of long fingers tracing his cheekbones, drumming over the tender words and shuddering breaths that had tickled his ear. The Sesshomaru of the future was a fond illusion compared to the warlord of the past. He might never see this softened version of his brother again. Would he be able to coax him towards it? Was that his goal now? Hell, did Inuyasha even _want_ to see him that way?

He couldn’t help thinking it would be easier to figure out if the glowing bastard had agreed to stay.

There was a lump in his throat again. It was propped up by the twisted remains of his knotted innards, all shoving up towards his mouth so he might spill his ugliness on the taupe leather seat at his front. He was such a pathetic loser. He’d made it this far without family, why should the promise of it – even a perverted one – send him into such an idiot stupor? Why would he risk spurning Kagome just to have Sesshomaru stick around for one moment longer? This is what such neediness got you. It ripped everything away. You couldn’t feed from one hand and then hold another, because they’d both tear away from you and leave you to starve. He was so tired. It was always an impossible choice.

He didn’t have to be lovers with anyone. He’d gladly give up that touch as long as he could _have_ them. Keep them close, their scents bold in his nose and warm hands within reach of his. That would be enough. Anything would be better than returning to the woods, skittering around human hovels for scraps in the dark.

That hunger never left you. It sat in your belly and poked at your mashed up food. Good for now, it would say, but gone too quick. It sat in your chest with its hands around your heart, and whenever it went beating too fast it would give it a squeeze. It’ll give out like that, it would say, or someone will cut it out for you. Don’t you remember last time? How you punctured like paper when the arrow struck home?

Kagome was burning holes in the back of his head. He could feel it. Had been for the last five minutes. He thought for the umpteenth time of Sesshomaru’s prophecy and wondered if they weren’t betting on bullshit. There was no chance they’d make a life together now. He had blown it. She had every right to leave him. Hell, he was shocked she was playing it as cool as she was. Were the positions reversed he would still be screaming.

Meanwhile, here in the car, Kagome was still staring.

There was no avoiding her. Not even the presence of her mother could dim her ire. Inuyasha composed himself, vile thoughts tumbling unseen behind the grip of his furrowed brow. He turned towards her.

What he found was a girl with an oddly studious expression. She was wetting her lips. “Don’t move,” Kagome said, and rustled around in the travel bag between them. She pried out something small, hard to discern at first until she whisked it up to one eye. That little black picture box. His brows rose in shock while she made quick work of the trigger. There was the signature snap and whirr, and she pulled it away from her squinting eye with a shrug.

“Sorry,” she muttered sheepishly. “I just…you looked nice.”

He stared at her without a sound.

She clutched the camera with timid hands in her lap. She was staring at it now, not him, but he didn’t trust he was out of the woods yet.

“Kagome?”

She took a very deep breath. “Will you be going back when we get home?”

Inuyasha watched her for a moment. He cast a quick glance at her mother, who was politely pretending to be deaf. He looked to his lap. His hands had balled up while he wasn’t looking. Hiding his claws. A trick for passing as human. It had worked when he was a child, if he flattened his ears and stole sheets to drape himself in.

“Do you want me to?” he asked quietly.

Kagome turned the camera over, thumb brushing over the glassy lens. “You should wash up, at least.”

Maybe he did stink after all. His nose rumpled. Instinct told him to snap back, but the way she slumped against the window stilled his tongue. Her arm was propped up as a pillow. The camera was still clutched tight in her other hand. “And try to get some sleep. I’ll grab blankets for the couch.”

He lost his bark altogether then. That was an invitation, wasn’t it? He wasn’t imagining things?

He met Mrs. Higurashi’s eyes in the thin mirror. She nodded at him, and her cheeks bunched with a smile.

Inuyasha’s belly turned this way and that, but the hurt in his chest was taking new form. Brilliant, burning, bleeding gratitude.

They weren’t turning him away.

* * *

“What did he say?”

“Hn?” Sesshomaru looked back over his shoulder, his blissfully empty hillside no longer vacant. Shippo was behind him. He’d made an effort to clear his face of tears but the blotches of red around his nose and eyes gave it all away.

“His mouth was moving but we couldn’t hear anything.”

Sesshomaru considered the merits of lying. Tragic that it was not in his nature, even to preserve his pride. “He said to join him in the afterlife when then the time comes.”

“Huh?” Shippo frowned. He folded his arms and padded closer. Whatever fury he’d held at the Lord of the West seemed to have waned. This was practically a companionable distance for the kitsune. “Why would he say that to you and not the rest of us?”

“Likely you’ll join him sooner than I. Why waste his breath?”

Shippo threw him a scathing look. “Are you being mean just because it’s a habit for you?” When Sesshomaru did not answer, he carried on. “I didn’t mean it, by the way. What I said before.”

The kistune dropped into a sit. Sesshomaru watched and waited. It was a bold move from a boy used to skittering out of the line of danger. He supposed the decades had emboldened him, and felt an odd sort of comfort from that. It would be a pity if the boy met a perilous end because he no longer had a legendary hanyou to hide behind. Nor his priestess, monk, or the pair of taijiya. The boy could no longer rely on humans and half-breeds to save his hide, and he seemed to be easing into the idea at last.

“He’s not all ours, either. I don’t think anybody belongs to one person. Even if it’s nice to think it, sometimes.” He leaned forward and grabbed the tips of his fox feet, tail swishing slow over long grass. “Maybe I would have done the same thing.”

It was more consideration than he expected from the child. Sesshomaru was certain he was exaggerating. He doubted Shippo had the fortitude to steal a corpse, bury it in secret and be dogged by its ghost thereafter. Yet the sentiment that rang true. Koga had acted in territorial vengeance. Shippo had accosted him prepared to come to blows, foolhardy as that had been. Only Rin behaved with courtesy and reason. Perhaps death was so commonplace among humans that they learned to treat it with serenity. She was younger than them all, but perhaps older in the mind.

He could not reply candidly. Instead he gave him a terse, “You’re forgiven.”

Shippo snorted. “Geez, you really are related.” Before he could ask how he came to such an idiotic conclusion, the child had leaned closer, imploring. “You’re still gonna come around to see Rin, right?”

Sesshomaru yearned to lean away from the imposition. “I shall.”

“Good. You’re mean but you’re not bad.”

The kitsune drew back then, waving to someone beyond. Rin had come over the top of the hill and called out to them.

“My lord, I’m going to take a walk. Come with me.”

He obliged. The kitsune smiled at him as he rose. He mulled the mystery of that over as he went to join the only pleasurable company to be had in this damned village. “Does he believe I might replace Inuyasha here?” he asked upon reaching her.

Rin laughed. “I doubt it. Maybe you’re growing on him, just the way you are.”

Sesshomaru would not entertain such nonsense.

She waited until they were well shaded by trees. The day was a romantic sort, soft sunlight and birdsong all around. One could see it as perfectly suitable or wretchedly ironic, considering their business today. It had been several hours since the pearl had sunk into the humble human grave. To his understanding there were arrangements being made among the mortals to hold a more traditional ceremony, and some fuss about the proper number of days being observed after the hanyou’s passing. So sparked a frivolous debate over the exact date of Inuyasha’s death. It wasn’t a matter Sesshomaru could help with. He never observed mortal calendars and could not relay the times if asked. Besides which, he had been late to find the body and lost too much sleep to count the days thereafter.

Thankfully, there were other matters on Rin’s mind.

“I was told,” she started, fishing around in a sack she had strung at her hip, “to hold onto these until a day like this. It was many years ago, back when they were still out exterminating. Kagome entrusted these to me just in case something happened.”

Rin passed him a small wrapping of green silk. Within it was a bound set of papers encased within a hard, three-fold shell, the scent of which was mysterious to him. Even if Rin had said nothing he would have known it was the priestess’s at once. It had been a long time since she brandished her curious wares, but their odors were as unmistakable as they were perplexing.

He opened it. There were clear sheathes glued to the paper, unmarred by impurities, which housed miniature paintings the quality of which astonished him. They were compact, reflective like ice, and unmatched in detail. It was as if he were laying eyes on the sight himself, sealing a moment in a frame no larger than the palms of his hands.

First there was Inuyasha, and beside him the priestess. She was young, dressed in clothes he’d never seen but her legs still brazenly bare. Inuyasha wore a cap of black and red with a brim that shaded his eyes, and was otherwise exactly the same. He looked confused and she was smiling. Behind them was a sprawling construct unlike the usual homes humans built for themselves, and dozens of mortals wandering in clothing similar to the girl’s. There were mountains behind them, one with a curious cut of rocks perched on a jutting plateau.

Somewhere at the back of his head there was a jolt. There and gone again, fleeting familiarity, but he couldn’t say what of. Outside of the mismatched pair and distant outline of nature, everything within the picture was completely foreign. The whole mountain was manicured into a human haven. He swatted the hazy notion away and turned the page.

Next was just Inuyasha, still in that ridiculous cap. He had been unwittingly captured as he gazed with wonder into a translucent trunk of brilliantly colored fish. His hands were splayed wide on the surface.

There was another, this time of him with another woman who looked remarkably like the priestess, though older and with closely cropped hair. A family member? She was posing with him next to a tidy bush bearing long lipped blossoms, too well groomed to be a natural growth.

Then Inuyasha was sitting at a table with the priestess’s arms around him. He looked bashful, a blush dusting his nose. Her grin was bright and mischievous. The food on the table was alien to him, and at the sides of the plates were dull, round-tipped knives and forks with four tongs.

On the following page he swaddled in the dark. Sheltered in some carriage, without the cap this time. He was turning towards the painter, expression soft. Vulnerable. Caught unawares in a private musing. He could easily begin to move, ask Sesshomaru the question so clearly poised on his lips. How could a human painter render detail like that?

There was a page without pictures. Instead there was a slice of parchment under the clear sheath, bearing a sprawling missive in traditional ink. The strokes were sloppy but legible, as if it had been honed for urgency over beauty and no one had slapped the girl’s hands to correct it.

_Dear Sesshomaru—_

Dear? His brow twitched. Presumptuous wench.

_I don’t think you would have wanted any pictures of me or my family in here, but Inuyasha looks very cute in these so I put them in anyway._

_These are special paintings from a trip to my home we took many years ago. I got a few from other times but not a lot, and some I left at my home with my family. You need something to remember the people you love by, and it’s a little better than some rusty old sword, don’t you think? Take good care of them, but if they start to get destroyed or deteriorate you should probably burn them. Don’t leave any evidence behind! I don’t want people from the future digging them up. They are for your eyes only!_

_I hope by the time you get these this won’t sound strange to you or make you angry, but Inuyasha cares very deeply about you. And not just because you’re family. I don’t want you to question that, not ever. Maybe you already know it, maybe you don’t. If you can, you should make use of what time you have with him. I want you to have happy things to remember him by, the way that I do._

_Take care of yourself too. Maybe you only have one brother, but you also only have one life to live. It’s a long one for you, but that’s all the more reason to make the most of it. There’s good people out there still._

_-Your friend, whether you like it or not,_

_Higurashi Kagome_

He was frowning. Rin was watching him with meditative intensity. His thoughts rarely leaked into the line of his mouth. Sesshomaru turned the page and saw more stolen moments. Inuyasha sleeping on a garish pink futon, pinned in place by the fattest cat he had ever seen. Peaceful, small and childish, like his human corpse. Then there he was with a young boy in front of a glowing black box, caught mid-snarl as the boy grinned at the painter with some contraption in his hands, black with raised buttons and a cord linked to the box. Inuyasha had one as well, but seemed to be cursing its existence.

There he was by towering temple gates, so like the ones near the grave they’d just made for him. There he was at a proper table with a piping bowl of noodles and chopsticks between his fingers, an old man scowling at his side. Inuyasha sprawling in a tree, looking wearily down to the observer. Inuyasha on hands and knees, pestering the fat cat with a mad grin.

Idle things. Nothing times. Days without meaning. Simplicities that would come with domesticity, not the harried, life-threatening encounters Sesshomaru met him under. This was a secret life caught in vivid inks. This was the sweeter side to the hanyou’s bile and brimstone, denied him until now and delivered by a woman he despised. He turned back to that portrait rendered in the dark, where Inuyasha looked bewildered out of the painting and clear into Sesshomaru’s eyes. More of his hair was pulled over his shoulder than usual -- the only perceptible mistake in the lot. In every other way, it was as if Inuyasha were beside him now. Close.

What might she have meant by all this? Higurashi Kagome, a woman who owed him nothing and to whom he’d given as much, had effectively handed him a supernatural record of her husband. What fever took hold of her that she could predict, decades prior, that Sesshomaru would be in want of such sentimental things?

And because by now he was addicted to torment, he had to wonder further. What would these simple memories look like, had Inuyasha spent them at his side instead of hers?

“My Lord?”

Sesshomaru returned to the present day. Rin had sidled near. She took a corner of the book and tilted it down for a peek. She smiled and pressed her thumb to Inuyasha’s ear. It didn’t twitch, no matter how close to living he looked.

“It’s strange, isn’t it? Kagome was very mysterious. Remember that funny cart she rode? Only two wheels and no horse?” Rin tutted. “I tried to get her to explain where she got this stuff, but it never made sense.”

“Indeed,” he remarked, and turned back to the first painting. The skyline still teased at him. If he turned it just so and narrowed his eyes he might be able to place it.

“She’s right though. He looks quite cute.” Rin beamed. Sesshomaru stared at her flatly. There was no doubt the note was intended to be private, but he supposed she was hoping to find out some secret of the painting’s origins. He would forgive her this time. “I wish I had some of you. It would be nice to stare at this handsome face whenever I pleased.”

She patted his shoulder. Not his cheek. Respectful impudence, as always.

“Don’t be foolish.”

Rin smiled wider. “Would you like to take me to the Goshinboku? It’s got nice shade at this time of day.”

Sesshomaru nodded and took her serenely by the arm as he clapped the book shut. He too would have liked more of those paintings. A few of his ward would be appreciated. He could recall at will how her cheeks bunched when she smiled back then, half-toothless and giddy in her childhood naivety, but having it committed to paper would be comforting. Someday soon, he would be setting blossoms by a stone slab that bore her name.

Sesshomaru counted his steps then, pace turned deliberately slow to savor the walk with Rin. It wouldn’t be until dusk, when he was taking leave of the village with Jaken at his heels and Ah-Un’s reins cold in his palms that he would remember where he’d seen the mountains before. 

He had watched the sun set from their vantage with a sagging corpse at his side.

* * *

Getting punched by Sesshomaru was almost nostalgic. Really brought him back to the good old days, big brother smacking him around and calling him nine kinds of stupid. All the while he had to lay back taking it, waiting for the day when it would _stop_. Can it be now? Can’t it please be now?

He’d never say please of course, but he wondered if he shouldn’t start making exceptions.

Inuyasha had turned back after the first week. The smart from the bruise was long since gone and he had half a mind to deck the jerk himself, just to keep things even. Then he had breached a treeline and the electric scent started tickling in his nose, and he lost all his nerve. Trotting after Sesshomaru now would mean was getting hit a second time. A third. A fourth thereafter.

It had been seventy years, and Inuyasha had barely whittled the man down to a terse what-do-you-want and a swift dismissal. Swats to the face if he didn’t fuck off quick enough. That was it.

So his feet carried him off and away. He cared little where. As long as it wasn’t home. Days sprinted past him too quick to catch. He’d raise his head and find the sun setting, or dangling at high noon when he could have sworn it was playing peek-a-boo with the treetops a second ago. It was an uneventful journey, dirty and lonely. When he smelled living things he turned away from them. His preferred company were the birds he snatched from trees and the fish he seized from streams. Their time together was always short-lived. They warmed his belly and he left the bones out to dry. He couldn’t be assed to bury them. He did nothing with himself and still slumped with lethargy from dawn to dusk.

Without a plan in his head, his body took charge. Magnetism tilted him towards a valley, through it to thick woods and then twisting trails that coiled high around a mountain. When at last he smelled the sulfur, he began to laugh. The sound was hoarse and died quickly.

It was the onsen. Not undiscovered, he was still not early enough for that. These were paths cleared in rough swathes, walking lanes outlined by flattened grass and ugly scuffed earth. Perhaps it was a route merchants dragged carts and bundles over, or armies filed through to on the way to a raid. What was important was that no one had built any lodges yet, and at the moment there were no strangers to stink up the water. Inuyasha enjoyed the heat on his naked body in absolute privacy, slipping smoothly in like a hand to a glove. The waters soaked him through and sucked at the dirt on his soles, the pads of his fingers. They erased his sweat and salt and burnished the bushy strands of his too-long hair. He thought about cutting it once, like a samurai in defeat. But he’d never worn a top knot, and he hadn’t lost a fight in a long time. Just walked away from worthless ones.

Inevitably, pathetically, he found himself drying off on the flat lip of rock where he had lost his virginity. Clothes back on, wet hair thrown out in a broad fan to catch the waning rays. Wasting the hours in daydreams and tracing the paths of Sesshomaru’s claws.

Inuyasha held a hand up to the setting sun. Watched the light splay between his fingers. If he squinted right he could magic curled markings on the back of his hand, imagine that it was paler, longer and more elegant. He let his hand drop and tickled the side of his neck with just the claws. Maximizing the illusion. He could pretend better if he couldn’t feel his own skin doing the work. He tipped one sharp point into a soft dip and pressed down until the flesh gave. Prickles of blood bloomed, the scent swelling sharp in his nose. He made a second puncture lower down. It was the right distance, but both wounds lacked the throbbing bruise of a jaw clamping down tight. The damage was too light. It would be healed in half an hour or less.

As always, his imagination and two hands couldn’t help him make up his mind.

He’d entertained some stupid ideas since he’d skulked out of that clearing. He could give as good to Sesshomaru as he’d gotten back then. Pin him to something hard and kiss him breathless. He wasn’t a gawky kid anymore. He knew how move with surety, modesty long since dried up after infinite rolls in bedsheets and grassy hideaways. Grabbing his dick might jog his memory, he’d thought one mad moment, and then chuckled to himself. It wasn’t a memory to Sesshomaru. Just to Inuyasha, and a half-faded one at that. Why else would he drag his sorry ass back up this cliff? He needed the boost himself.

Dismissing it as a fever dream would have been all too easy. He had come back through the well and carried on handsomely as can be. The next time he saw his brother, nothing happened. Blood and snarls and cold words, yes yes, those were always a constant. What Inuyasha needed was a hint. A glance that lingered. A parting of stern lips, pointed tongue dashing out to wet them, quick enough to miss. A cryptic missive.

Nothing. Absolute frigidity, and not a whiff more.

The next encounter was much the same, though it had become clear that the little human girl at his heels was dearer to him than his own flesh and blood. Inuyasha had lit up with a hateful blaze. Later he had taken a private moment to stare into a pool, examining his reflection. Once as a child he’d pulled a claw around the base of one ear, shivering as he tried to pluck up the courage to slice it off. Anything to better pass among the mortals. Avoid the stones and curses.

He had studied those silly ears anew and came to no better conclusion. Better to be full human than half anything, he had thought spitefully, and dashed his reflection into a rippled mess.

You could call him dramatic, but it only proved truer the longer he lived. The fluid nature of a hanyou had already familiarized him with the balance of strength versus frailty. He spent much of his teenage years tumbling up and down the food chain: middling with his sword in hand, high with purple stripes on his cheeks and mind gone blank with rage, and of course, absolute bottom on the new moon. That was the baseline struggle. A second study of opposites evolved in the wake of Naraku’s death, one that he had been dreading all along. Age versus youth.

It manifested twofold. First was the obvious, in that living among mortals he’d met while they looked the same age was going to get awkward real quick. Somewhere around his forty-third year, Miroku had been stunned to realize that Inuyasha was running a long con to meet him at eye level. He had been growing in such minor spurts that no one saw it happening. Meanwhile the rest of them bemoaned the birth of crows feet, their bad joints and worse backs. Sango had cracked her spine one morning and whined that she could never get rid of a nasty crick at its base. From across the room Miroku had chimed a merry, “Yooou’re welcome!” She hit him of course, but carried on to kick at Inuyasha’s ankles too. “Don’t stand there looking so smug. If time doesn’t get you in the end, _I_ will.”

The second form of this opposition was crueller. It tangled irreparably around both his loves.

He loved Kagome with inescapable familiarities and deep knowledge. When she came back after her three year hiatus they simply picked up where they left off. Their lives were spent attached at the hip. They were supernaturally in tune with one another, and as she grew wiser with each passing year Inuyasha found that in her company, he was wise too. On an internal measure they could learn and love at the same pace. Torches he’d lit at sunset would burn into early morning while they talked, and sometimes extinguished before they exhausted the subject. They never stopped desiring each other but grew to that happy point where it wouldn’t cloud their judgment. Each had free claim to the other’s body. They could tease, they could laugh, they could sort out their problems without losing their heads. With her, he understood the leagues of difference between being a boy and being a man.

The way in which he fell for Sesshomaru was a lot like how he’d fallen for Kikyo. The irony was not lost on him. It was a childish admiration, cultivated from afar. He wasn’t allowed to get close, and on the rare occasions they spoke he was treated in much the same way as always. Less bark and less bite, but with no respect and no offered insight. Inuyasha had always thought he belonged better in the leagues of myth than the land of the living, a mystery to all mortals.

Except he had evidence against that. He had felt his pulse. He had seen what yearning looked like in those icy killer’s eyes, he saw his cheeks go rosy pink with the effort of his thrust, had felt him stiffen when he came and been swaddled in his desperate embrace. Inuyasha sought out those weaknesses whenever he came to call on Rin. He perched high in trees or lay low in tall grass, watching for the moment when the mask would crack. But Rin was a child, and though Sesshomaru cared for her and her alone, she couldn’t coax out the complexities Inuyasha was looking for.

Instead he discovered a different sort of sweetness. Against all logic Sesshomaru would give an ear to the girl’s prattling, accept the flowers she picked, dote on her whims and bestow gifts on her unannounced. He let her lay her head prettily in his lap and drift off to sleep, longs claws tickling through her unruly hair. The sight of it made his heart burn. It called to him the same way Kikyo’s soft voice had when she made her turns about the village, helping and healing and shining bright in the sun. They both had a cool collectivism, unflappable save for these understated shows of affection. He had always envied Sesshomaru’s poise, but framed in this new light it made him covet the man all the more. He wanted to be the one for whom it would break. He pined for a man unreachable like a lovesick teenager, and then went back to the knowing charms of his wife.

On one hand Kagome elevated him. On the other, Sesshomaru weakened him. A dichotomy that should be impossible, should be unsustainable, ought to erode after so many years. Except that he was a creature of halves, and so could not know how to be one of anything. At least he couldn’t ricochet between the two like he had the priestesses back in the day. Sesshomaru was never around enough for that, and he wouldn’t relish Inuyasha’s company anyway.

He tried his best to squash the infatuation. For Kagome’s sake, and his own. It didn’t do him any good. His filthy thoughts poked out when he wasn’t ready to face them, sleeping or awake. They’d rally when Sesshomaru materialized, and roared when he’d cast that chilly gold gaze his way. He grew fearful that Sesshomaru might somehow read his mind.

Other times, he wished he would.

Fuck, his spine was bruising up. Inuyasha stretched long, hands pointed up and feet pointed down, and bemoaned that even with the padding of his clothes, the rock beneath him was growing unbearable. There was no give in it. It seemed even a child of the wilderness like him could go soft from so much indoor living.

For the first time in ages, he missed his bed. Their bed. A cozy pallet with a divot in the center where they haplessly rolled into one another, caught in the throes of slumber. Two months ago they had sat atop it, Kagome reclined on cushions and him spooning thin soup into her mouth. She had asked, hesitantly, to feel his ears.

“I’ve just never seen anything like them,” she had rasped with a too shy smile, and her rattling hand sputtered out halfway to his head. He bent low and helped her reach his ears with a timid grip on the wrist. Careful, oh so careful, her skin had gone papery and the bones beneath it were brittle. He had to be grateful. It was one of the good days. She was too weak to go wandering by then, but in exchange she would lose herself in fits. Kagome would ask where she was, calling for the police. Screaming at him to leave off and begging for her mother. Each day was a roll of the dice. Would she be forgetful and sweet, or forgetful and scared?

Inuyasha shuddered. He covered his eyes. No, he didn’t miss it. He didn’t miss their things, the place they lived or the people they knew. If he went back now he’d suck in air and all he would smell is Higurashi Kagome, permeated into every whorl in the wood, on the wet underside of the stones in the garden, stuck on the lip of their cooking pots and gilding the threads of their clothes. A hundred rains could fall and not a one of them could wash her out of that village. He would die there. He didn’t even want to look at it.

Anybody could justify running to Sesshomaru after that.

For the hundredth time he ran the facts through his head. All the words Sesshomaru had whispered to him, the recounting of his slights, the circles run around his fate. Well, fuck, he wasn’t dead yet. He was trying his best, for pity’s sake. He was skirting around any obvious tilts to self-sacrifice, but he needed _something_ to grab hold of. He wanted it to be Sesshomaru. He did.

He had been ordered to return a second time. But could he? Wasn’t it masochistic to crawl back to knuckles and sharp heels, zipping whips and insults? Did he have to wait another fucking decade for Sesshomaru to unstick his head from his ass?

The plateau was empty, but Inuyasha could conjure the rocky wonder from the vapours of his memory just fine. A great beast, curled up to sleep. Crystallized, immortalized, monetized. A sculpture of death. Of outliving your own time, your own people. Even after seeing it with his own eyes, it was hard to conceive that one day, Sesshomaru might curl up in the spot he was sprawled now, and decide he’d had enough.

They had swapped places. Literally and figuratively. Back in the day Inuyasha had been bunny stunned, too dumb to figure out what to do with his clothes off other than lay there and take it, and too blindsided to navigate the murky waters of melodrama he was thrust into. Sesshomaru had lived through a couple extra centuries. In the here and now he was a static presence. The Sesshomaru of this era could coast on the life of mythos and never think twice about the turn of the sun and moon. And so, he’d never see cause to change. He wouldn’t understand he was alone until he turned around one day and found even the toad had croaked. Meanwhile, Inuyasha had to count his days like the last of his coins. If living with mortals taught you one thing, it was that was time quickly lost if you didn’t watch it close.

 _It was foolish to hate you. Even more foolish to want you._ Amen to that, big brother.

He looked up at the sky. Stars were blinking, the sun was nearly extinguished. No moon though. He squinted, scanning again, and caught not so much as a sliver of it. Inuyasha shot upright. Had a full month gone by already? Where was his head? No wonder he felt like such spectacular shit.

His mouth twisted. Old instincts screamed at him to turn tail and flee. He couldn’t hear the nattering wildlife any longer, and the scent of pine wasn’t so crisp in his nose. Shit. There were only minutes left. He looked to the narrow pathway. Without his powers or the zip of a car it would take him a day to get back down. There wasn’t a convenient hidey hole along the way, either. Just the hot springs, and a hell of a lot of bush.

So. Lie here in the open like fresh fish on a platter, or go for dubious cover in the trees? Embrace the possibility of death, or scramble to see another day?

He thought again of the sleeping wolf. He thought of Sesshomaru sailing off after hitting him, damning himself without knowing it. He thought of the sweet promises whispered into his half-breed ears. He thought of his baleful warnings.

Sesshomaru had said grief took him down.

He snarled. Like fuck. Like _fuck._ Give him the decade. Give him the next fifty years. He was empty, he was alone, he hated waking every morning to see the world go merrily on like it didn’t swallow up the one woman who made it a better place, but he hated one thing above all else: being told what he can and cannot do.

Inuyasha flexed his fingers, rolled to feet, and started for the trees. Fate could suck his dick, he decided. He would go back to Sesshomaru. Maybe not straight away, but definitely with a clearer head. Maybe it would be time to confess some things. If he got hit, he got hit. He could take it. They might never be together. It could be he’d just annoy him back into some bullshit rivalry to pass the time. It wouldn’t matter, Inuyasha would do it. Anything that would keep the bastard from turning to stone.

Anything to spare him from knowing what mortality really meant.

Further down the path and concealed by bushes, nine men crouched, arguing in thin hisses whether those fine red robes really were made from the mystical fur of the fire rat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was very seriously tempted, especially after the comments on the last chapter and seeing the feedback from a friend, to change gears last minute and jerry rig a happy ending. I'm sorry to say I've decided to stay the course. Everything I had set in place in prior chapters led too neatly to the original conclusion, and I do feel that if I had chopped it all down to get a happily ever after, it would be glaringly apparent. I'd trip on more than one plothole to get there, and perhaps the quality would suffer too. This is the time travel that assumes your meddling was already built into the timeline. The efforts they made to change their fates only sealed them, no matter how good their intentions. 
> 
> That said, there IS a happy ending to be found. It was in the last chapter. Inuyasha had told Sesshomaru that he and Kagome would be waiting for him just before their ghosts departed. And they were, when Sesshomaru faded away on the plateau. They were the last thing he saw before he disappeared, the reason for his smile. They are together. Just in another life. I presume it's like that gif of April Ludgate with her boyfriend and her boyfriend's boyfriend. That's them in eternity, I promise you that much. 
> 
> Once again, thank you so much for reading my Debbie Downer nonsense, and I hope you enjoyed this ending, or if you didn't, that the journey towards it was worth reading anyway. Much love to you all, stay safe, and may you find all the ship content you desire! <3
> 
> And as my final note, man I can't believe I forgot Myoga existed? Like at all. I guess I didn't have any exposition for him to come spout off. Damn. I meant no disrespect, my little flea man.


End file.
